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MODERN WORLD SETTING 


AMERICAN HISTORY 


^iosrapfip 


BY 

GEORGE J. JONES, Ph.B. 

II 

HEAD OE HISTORY DEPARTMENT IN THE JUNIOR AND 
SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLS OE WASHINGTON, D.C. 


AND 


EMILY F. SLEMAN, M.A. 

DIRECTOR OE EDUCATIONAL GUIDANCE AND 
RESEARCH, CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL, 
WASHINGTON, D.C. 


D. C. HEATH AND COMPANY 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 

ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO DALLAS 

LONDON 


CTio7 

/915 


Copyright, 1925 
By D. C. Heath and Company 


2KS 


PRINTED IN U.S.A. 

DEC-7’25 

©CU873733 


PREFACE 


This book was planned to meet the requirements of 
a course introduced into the Junior High Schools of 
Washington, D.C., after a careful study both of the 
re fort of the N. E. A. Committee and of the recom¬ 
mendations of the Second Committee of Eight. This 
course in the modern background to our history pre¬ 
supposes that pupils have studied the earlier European 
background. 

The N. E. A. Committee (1916) recommended that 
emphasis be placed on European History in the seventh 
grade of Junior High Schools. The Second Committee 
of Eight (1921) also stressed the importance of teach¬ 
ing American History in its “ world setting ” in the 
seventh and eighth grades. 

Grade school pupils, generally, throughout the coun¬ 
try have been taught the European background to our 
history up to 1776 only. The important background 
since the time of our Revolution has been disregarded 
so that eighth grade graduates have learned very little 
of the world setting ” of American History since this 
country became independent of England. As Modern 
History is generally an elective subject in Senior High 
Schools comparatively few Senior High School pupils 
make a study of the world problems of the last one 
hundred fifty years. 

iH 


IV 


PREFACE 


Modern History is altogether too complicated to be 
taught in a formal old-fashioned textbook way to 
seventh grade pupils. This book is in the nature of 
stories of the lives of great men and women. The 
stories are written with a view of interesting pupils 
and at the same time developing the idea of how each 
character influenced civilization. The illustrations are 
for the most part from photographs of famous paint¬ 
ings in the possession of the Library of Congress in 
Washington, D.C. 

The course gives grade school pupils information of 
Modern History, something which is too rarely done 
in this country. It also prepares pupils for a more in¬ 
telligent study of the history of their own country, for 
the reason that American History is to a large extent 
a history of our relations with other countries. This 
course in Modern European History, placed in the 
seventh grade of the Junior High Schools of Wash¬ 
ington after a careful study of recommendations of 
National Committees, has proved most successful in 
practice. 

Acknowledgments are due from the authors to Miss 
Marjorie Paul, Instructor in English at the Central 
High School, for valuable assistance in the preparation 
of the manuscript and reading of proof. 

George J. Jones. 

Emily F. Sleman. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


, PAGE 

THE OLD REGIME AND THE ERENCH REVOLU¬ 
TION 

Louis XIV. i 

The great power of the King under the Old Regime. 

Military conquests by Louis for personal glory. - 
Oppression of the people. 

The Huguenots flee to British America. 


Voltaire. 13 

Criticism of the King and creation of dissatisfaction in 
France with the evils of their state government. 

Frederick the Great.21 


Establishment of militarism in Prussia like that of the Old 
Regime in France. 

Influence of Voltaire seen in “ Benevolent Despotism.” 

Marie Antoinette.. 33 

Marie Antoinette and family, the victims of the abuses of 
their predecessors. 

The French Revolution. 

INTELLECTUAL AWAKENING AND SPREAD OF 
THE MOVEMENT FOR FREEDOM 

Sir Isaac Newton. 

Beginnings of Modern Science. 

Peter the Great. 

Foundation of the Russian Empire. 

The adoption by Russia of Western Civilization. 

William Pitt. 

American Revolution. — The colonists had friends in 
Parliament. 

Opening up of new lands — India and Australia. 


46 

55 

62 


v 









VI 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


Kosciuszko. 74 

Foreign aid to Americans during Revolution. 

Kosciuszko, a defender of Polish freedom. 

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 

Watt and Arkwright.82 

The beginning of the “ Age of Steam.” 

The origin of the factory system. 

George Stephenson.92 

The origin and the development of the railroad. 

Karl Marx .102 

The development of the factory system. 

Labor problems. 

Socialism not the solution. 

REACTION TOWARD ABSOLUTISM AND CON¬ 
TINUED STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM 

Napoleon Bonaparte . 107 

Military conquests. 

Temporary reestablishment in Erance of an absolute 
monarch. 

Sells Louisiana to the United States.—The Napoleonic 
Code. 

Horatio Nelson.126 

Defeat of Napoleon’s plan for world conquest on the sea. 

Duke of Wellington .136 

Complete downfall of Napoleon on land. 

Metternich. 145 

Attempts to reestablish and strengthen absolute govern¬ 
ments throughout Europe. 

Effect of Metternich’s policies on immigration to the 
United States. 

Kossuth.153 

Rebellion in Hungary against Metternich’s tyranny. 

Attempts to get help for Hungary in the United States. 











CONTENTS vii 

PAGE 

Bolivar and San Martin . i6i 

Rebellion in South America against Spanish oppression. 

Other leaders in revolutions in South America: Miranda, 
O’Higgins. 

Development of South American trade. 

Garibaldi . 172 

Italy becomes a united constitutional government. 

Austria loses control of Italy. 

Bismarck . 180 

The German army. 

The king of Prussia becomes Emperor of Germany. 

The power of the Emperor like that of Louis XIV. 

THE VICTORIAN AGE 

Queen Victoria . 189 

Long period of general peace and prosperity. 

The personal influence of the Queen. 

Gladstone . 201 

Internal reform in the English Empire. 

Disraeli . 210 

Advocates growth of England as a world power. 

(a) Suez Canal. 

{l>) Colonies. 

David Livingstone . 221 

Explorations and missionary work in Africa. 

Cecil Rhodes . 229 

Extension of English colonies in South Africa. 

Efforts to establish permanently friendly relations between 
England, United States, and Germany. 

(Rhodes Scholarships.) 

Florence Nightingale . 238 

Growth of desire to relieve human suffering. 

(The Red Cross abroad and at home.) 

Jenner and Pasteur . 248 

Development of medical science as applied to human 
welfare. 












viii CON^ . o 

PAGE 

THE WORLD WAR j 

King Albert OF Belgium . 258 ( 

H is stand for integrity in international affairs. 

The saving of France. 

Clemenceau (Embodiment of French Spirit of Lib¬ 
erty) . 267 

Lloyd George (England’s Great War Leader) . . . 278 
The winning of the World War for freedom. 

The Peace Conference. 

(a) The new map of Europe. 






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Hall of Mirrors — Versailles 

The throne room of Louis XIV ; the scene of the proclamation of the German 
Empire in 1871, and the meeting place of the Peace Conference at the end of the 

World War in 1919. 


/ 





















Modern World Setting for 
American History 

Biography 

LOUIS XIV 
1638-1715 

In the latter half of the seventeenth century France 
dominated all Europe in trade and colonial expansion. 
Her achievements in art, literature, and science over¬ 
shadowed those of any other nation. The magnificence 
of her royal court was the envy of all other European 
monarchs. Much of the extraordinary prominence of 
France at this period was due to the character of her 
king, Louis XIV. 

When Louis XIII died, the young prince was only 
five years of age, and so the power of the court was 
exercised for some years by his mother and the shrewd 
prime minister. Cardinal Mazarin. But Louis very 
early in life felt the importance of the position that he 
knew would one day be his, and began as a child to 
assume the dignity and grand manner of a king. One 
day, when he was playing with the son of a very high 
noble at court, he gave him his favorite crossbow to 
look at; and when it was not returned immediately he 
grew very impatient. “ Sire,” his.governess whispered 


2 


BIOGRAPHY 


in his ear, kings give what they lend.” Louis, there¬ 
upon, drew himself up with all the dignity of child¬ 
hood, and, turning to his playmate, said, “ Monsieur de 
Lomenie, keep the crossbow. I wish that it were some¬ 
thing of importance, but such as it is, I give it to you 
with all my heart.” 

Although Louis was encouraged in the development 
of this polite and royal manner which characterizes him 
throughout his reign, he was given practically no edu¬ 
cation, for Anne, his mother, and Mazarin wished to 
keep him ignorant in order that they might more fully 
exercise their power over him. When the Cardinal 
entered Louis’ room one night, and found the seven- 
year-old boy listening with shining eyes to the fairy 
tales his valet was reading to him, he was very much 
displeased. He feared that the eagerness of Louis’ 
interest might stimulate him to desire further educa¬ 
tion. And so the future king of France, brought up in 
an atmosphere of wealth and elegance with little or no 
mental discipline, quite naturally grew to be pleasure- 
loving and extravagant. 

On September 5, 1651, at the age of thirteen, Louis 
became king of France. Anne turned over all power 
to him and the nobles pledged allegiance to the new 
king in a beautiful and impressive ceremony. Three 
years later his coronation took place in the Cathedral 
at Rheims. 

As Louis reached manhood, his mother, casting her 
eyes around for a possible bride for the king, looked 


LOUIS XIV 


3 

with favor upon four of the many candidates: the 
Princess Henrietta of Orange, the Princess of Portu¬ 
gal, Marguerite of Savoy, and Maria Theresa of Spain. 
Anne greatly desired to marry her son to Maria 
Theresa, but she knew well that the other powers of 
Europe would not permit the French king to marry a 
princess who was heir to the Spanish throne. The 
union of two such powerful nations under one crown 
would menace the security of all Europe. 

The choice finally fell upon Marguerite of Savoy. 
Louis was so much impressed and pleased with Mar¬ 
guerite that arrangements were all but completed, when 
word came of the birth of a male heir to the Spanish 
throne. As this removed the objection to an alliance 
with Maria Theresa, Marguerite was informed, to her 
surprise, that the king had changed his mind and that 
she had been rejected. Less than a month later, the 
marriage treaty with Maria Theresa was completed. 
Maria Theresa received a dowry of five hundred thou¬ 
sand golden crowns, but renounced all claim to the 
Spanish throne. 

There was a great display of welcome in Paris when 
Louis and Maria entered the city. The streets were 
strewn with herbs, so that the horses’ hoofs could not 
be heard. Louis, heading the procession on a black 
charger, splendidly caparisoned in cloth of gold and 
silver, was followed by the queen in an antique car of 
emblazoned gold. The nobles came after the royal 
couple, according to their ranks. 


4 


BIOGRAPHY 


Every one received the new queen joyfully, and the 
parliament sent messages to thank Louis for his choice. 
For weeks the whole court was given over to celebra¬ 
tion of the great event. Louis, just twenty-one years 
old at the time, then entered upon a life of luxury 
and gayety, fully enjoying the profession of “being 
a king.” 

The death, soon afterward, of the influential Car¬ 
dinal Mazarin gave much more power into Louis’ 
hands. Summoning his ministers, he told them that 
hereafter there would be no prime ministers. When 
asked to whom they should refer matters of public 
business, Louis replied, “ To me.” From then on he 
began to exercise complete control in all matters of 
state. When he was informed on one occasion that 
the deputies had refused to pass a bill that he favored, 
he immediately went to the hall and remained until 
it had been passed. During the afternoon he learned 
that upon his departure the deputies had again rejected 
the measure. He at once ordered a meeting of the 
deputies for the next morning — the date of an im¬ 
portant hunt Louis wanted to attend. At nine-thirty 
the next morning, he appeared at the meeting clad in 
his hunting dress, and followed by his retinue in the 
same attire. He heard mass, going through the cere¬ 
monies with whip in hand, and remained until the bill 
had again been passed. As he left, he declared that in 
the future all that was needed for the passing of edicts 
was the will of the king. 



Hyacinthe Rigaud 

Louis XIV 

Copyrighted by Lea and Febiger, Publishers, Philadelphia, Pa. 




6 


BIOGRAPHY 


In this belief in the supreme and unquestioned power 
of the king, Louis was adopting the idea of the “ divine 
right of kings ” that James I of England had an¬ 
nounced fifty years earlier, but which the English peo¬ 
ple had refused to accept. According to that theory, 
the king was a representative of God to his people. 
His will to them must, therefore, be as the will of God. 
There could be no disobedience to his commands, nor 
any criticism of his acts. 

There was a great deal about Louis XIV that made it 
possible for him to carry out this theory successfully. 
He was handsome and kingly in presence. He had a 
natural charm of manner, and had he been well edu¬ 
cated might have made a good king, for he took his 
position seriously and gave much time to the business 
of ruling. 

He was fortunate in the early years of his reign to 
be surrounded by wise and skillful ministers. Among 
these, one of the most famous was Colbert. It was he 
who accomplished great financial reforms in France. 
He put the country on a sound basis, checked the waste 
of public funds, and stimulated manufactures and com¬ 
merce throughout France. Under Colbert’s influence, 
too, the fame of France as a center of art and literature 
grew. Louis encouraged the great dramatists and poets 
of the day by inviting them to the court and rewarded 
their achievements by giving them pensions. He built 
an astronomical observatory at Paris and took steps to 
enlarge the Royal Library. But, while the king was a 


LOUIS XIV 


7 

liberal patron of the arts, he kept a close watch over 
anything that was written on religious or political mat¬ 
ters, and he used his despotic power to stifle any ex¬ 
pression of criticism of the state or church. 

Absolute in power at home, and glorying in the high 
position France was assuming among the nations of 
Europe, Louis now entered upon ah aggressive cam¬ 
paign to enlarge the dominions of France by seizing 
the lands of other countries. 

When Philip of Spain died, Louis, for no other rea¬ 
son than personal glory, took the chance to occupy 
some territory in the Spanish Netherlands. Spain was 
in no condition to resist Louis’ claims, but Holland, 
alarmed by the French king’s high-handed way of seiz¬ 
ing territory, persuaded Sweden and England to join 
with her to check his ambitions. Such a powerful 
alliance forced Louis to yield. He restored most of 
the conquered territory, retaining a few fortified towns 
on his northern frontier. 

Four years later, however, angry at his defeat, and 
at Holland’s part in it, Louis made war upon the Dutch. 
He bought the assistance of the English king, Charles 
II, and gained the support of Sweden and the emperor 
(the Austrian ruler of the Holy Roman Empire) by 
promises of territory. The invasion of Holland pro¬ 
ceeded, and Louis won a great deal of territory from 
the Dutch in the southern portion. Emboldened by 
his success, he asked for more land and laid humiliat¬ 
ing demands upon the people. William of Orange, in 



Fugitive Huguenots 
















LOUIS XIV g 

response, ordered the dikes to be cut, and by flooding 
a part of the country drove the French out of Holland. 

As Louis grew older, he was more and more de¬ 
termined to reign alone. He became jealous of his 
ministers and refused to have any one around him 
except those who would flatter him and pay him court. 
One of his most ill-advised actions was his treatment 
of the Huguenots, who, almost a million in number, 
formed a strong part of France’s rich business and manu¬ 
facturing class. These French Protestants had since 
the time of Louis’ grandfather been granted religious 
toleration. Louis, on the advice of his officials, revoked 
the edict of Nantes which had protected them, and in 
the series of persecutions that followed thousands were 
killed or imprisoned, and more than three hundred 
thousand left France seeking protection in the Nether¬ 
lands, in England, and in America. 

As Louis grew more and more despotic, he took in¬ 
creasing pleasure in his reputation for wealth and mag¬ 
nificence. When he discovered on a visit to his 
Minister of the Treasury that Fouquet’s palace was 
more elaborate than his own, he was very jealous, and 
as soon as an opportunity arose he satisfied his anger 
by having Fouquet imprisoned, and at once set about 
to build a greater palace for himself. Louis was in a 
position to take as much of the people’s money as he 
could get and to spend it on what he pleased. With 
utter disregard of the cost, he had erected at Versailles 
the vast and wonderful palace which remains one of 



A Prince in France 


Jean Marc Nattier 


The people begg-ed for bread, but the Court lived with no thought 

of cost. 




LOUIS XIV 



Meissonier 

Players at Bouls at Versailles 

the world’s show places to-day. In the innumerable 
apartments of this great palace Louis established thou¬ 
sands of his courtiers, and lavished princely incomes 
upon those who served him. Proud of his power and 
position in Europe, and flattered on every hand as 
The Grand Monarch,” he gave little or no thought 
to the welfare of the peasantry, upon whom the ever- 
increasing taxes for the expenses of his splendid court 
fell most heavily. 

When the king of Spain died in 1700, all Europe 
was astounded to learn from his will that he had made 
Philip, the young grandson of Louis XIV, heir to his 
vast dominions. England, Holland, and the emperor, 
alarmed at this tremendous extension of French influ- 




12 


BIOGRAPHY 


ence, formed a new alliance declaring war against 
Louis in 1702. The conflict was carried on in America 
as well as in Europe, French and English colonists 
fighting against each other in what is known in Ameri¬ 
can history as Queen Anne’s War. 

After ten years of unsuccessful fighting, Louis was 
ready to compromise, and signed terms of peace at 
Utrecht in which each of the nations at war received 
some part of the Spanish territory over which they had 
been struggling. Louis XIV’s grandson retained his 
right to the throne of Spain. Austria gained the Span¬ 
ish Netherlands and also the Spanish possessions in 
Italy. England gained most as a result of the war, 
for France gave to her Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, 
and the Hudson Bay regions, and Spain ceded to her 
Gibraltar — that important position at the entrance to 
the Mediterranean Sea. 

Two years later, at the age of seventy-seven years, 
Louis XIV died. His death was little regretted. All 
over France there was a feeling of relief. The people, 
suffering under crushing burdens, began to cherish hope 
for deliverance. 

Thus ended one of the longest reigns in the annals 
of history. Louis XIV dazzled the world with his 
magnificence, and, under him, France for a time had 
a proud position among the nations. But his despotism 
and extravagant rule created in the people the dis¬ 
content that three quarters of a century after his death 
broke out in the great French Revolution. 


VOLTAIRE 

1694-1778 


As long as Louis XIV ruled, none dared to disobey the 
will of the monarch j none dared to protest nor to 
question his divine right to the crown. We who live 
in an age of democratic government, religious tolera¬ 
tion, and free speech, may find it hard to believe that 
there was a time when a monarch had the power of life 
and death over his subjectsj when he imprisoned with¬ 
out trial, and when he persecuted because of religious 
differences. But that is the other side of the picture 
of the glorious ” age of Louis XIV. 

After the death of this great and powerful monarch, 
the growing dissatisfaction which his selfish rule had 
created began to find expression, and in 1778 public 
opinion had become strong enough to compel his grand¬ 
son Louis XVI, against his wish, to assist the revolting 
colonies in North America in their struggle against the 
English king. Eleven years later the will of the 
people became so powerful that the French began a 
revolution for free and equal government. 

Among the first voices raised in protest against the 
conditions in France resulting from Louis XIV’s ab¬ 
solutism was that of Voltaire. 

Voltaire, or to call him by his real name, Frangois 


13 


BIOGRAPHY 


H 

Marie Arouet, was born in Paris on November 2i, 
1694, of a wealthy, middle-class family. After re¬ 
ceiving a good college education, he was introduced by 
a prominent friend to the most aristocratic, witty, and 
frivolous French society. Hil wit, natural charm of 
manner, and skill in composing pleasing, light verses 
made him immediately popular. Soon he possessed 
more worldly knowledge than many an older man. 

Once during this period, after a great lady had given 
him some money for correcting her verses, he was so 
overjoyed that he bought a carriage and a pair of 
horses from an auctioneer. He entertained his friends 
the whole day by driving around the streets of Paris. 
When late at night he brought his horses and carriage 
home, he could find no place, except his father’s over¬ 
crowded stables, in which to put them. In attempting 
this he made so much noise that his father, having been 
awakened, turned him out of doors. On the next day 
Voltaire’s fine horses and carriage were sold at half 
price. 

Outraged by his young son’s wild conduct, Arouet’s 
father attempted to tame him. He was given the posi¬ 
tion of secretary to the French Ambassador in Holland. 
While there, he obtained much interesting knowledge 
of its republican government. This thoroughly respect¬ 
able occupation, however, was abruptly ended by a 
pathetic love affair with a Protestant maiden. 

Arouet had early decided on the career of a writer. 
Therefore, when he returned to France, enthusiastic 


VOLTAIRE 


15 



Voltaire 

over these new liberal ideas, he immediately began an 
unmerciful attack on the government of the Duke of 
Orleans, an able but unprincipled man, who was 
regent of France during the minority of Louis XV. 
The Duke of Orleans, in a futile attempt to nip in the 
bud the career of the promising young writer, twice 
ordered Arouet to leave Paris. Finally, angered be- 




i 6 


BIOGRAPHY 


yond control by a Latin inscription, which ridiculed the 
government, he had Arouet rather comfortably lodged 
in the Bastile. 

After a year in the Bastile, Arouet was set free. He 
then began a life of intense literary activity and soon 
became famous through the successful acting of one of 
his tragedies. Following this triumph he assumed the 
name “ Voltaire.” During his headlong dash for great¬ 
ness, he tried his hand at almost every kind of writing. 
Quite early an epic poem, an eloquent plea for religious 
toleration, was published. Soon after its publication, 
Voltaire was again sent to the Bastile, simply because 
he quarreled with a disreputable nobleman who had 
him beaten almost to death. However, he was re¬ 
leased in a few days on the promise that he would go 
to England. 

There he spent two years of hard study. After 
thoroughly .acquainting himself with the language, 
literature, institutions, and social life, as few have done 
in this period of time, he carried back to France a 
volume of twenty-four letters, published in England, 
as Ljetters Concerning the English Nation. In these 
he showed that national peace, happiness, and power 
were not dependent upon the absolute government 
under which the French lived. The effect on the 
public has never been surpassed. Thousands of his 
followers clamored for a reform of existing abuses. 
Needless to say, these letters were not popular with 
the autocracy. 



Nicholas Maes 


Boy with a Hawk 


Children of nobility in Voltaire’s time were reared in luxury and 

idleness. 



BIOGRAPHY 


Having acquired wealth through certain investments, 
he now lived in grand style in a chateau in Lorraine. 
While there he wrote plays which pleaded for reli¬ 
gious toleration. His works show that he was greatly 
influenced by Shakespeare. The History of Charles 
XIIy King of Sweden^ a marvelous piece of narrative, 
was his first historical work. In his philosophical writ¬ 
ings he expressed his ideas clearly and wonderfully. 
His popularity increased so rapidly that the court was 
compelled to recognize him. 

In 1748 he was elected a member of the French 
Academy and was appointed a gentleman of the king’s 
bedchamber. His favor at court, however, was of short 
duration. 

At the urgent invitation of Frederick II of Prussia, 
he went in 1749 to live at Berlin. During his three 
years’ stay, he published the Age of Louis XIVy an his¬ 
torical work, which he had been perfecting for twenty 
years. In it Louis’ extravagant wars were attacked. 
Frederick might have endured this criticism of one of 
his idols, but Voltaire’s merciless ridicule of a French¬ 
man, whom Frederick had made president of the Berlin 
Academy, was too much. The two men quarreled. In 
a great rage Voltaire left the palace. On his journey 
back to Paris he was arrested at Frankfort and made to 
undergo very humiliating treatment at Frederick’s 
command. 

After returning to France, Voltaire became a home¬ 
less wanderer for nearly two years. In his endeavor 



The Trumpeter 


Francis Mieris, the Elder 


This is how a court soldier dressed, lived, drank, and played 
cards. His clothes were very fine but his room in the palace was 
small and very cold in the winter. 



20 


BIOGRAPHY 


to find safety, he settled in Switzerland near Lake 
Geneva. But having a fond love for France, he was 
not contented with living in Switzerland, and by patient 
effort acquired in France some lands which were very 
near the boundary. On this land he made a little 
literary kingdom, whicF was soon acknowledged the 
intellectual center of Europe. 

The people rightly saw in him a champion against 
tyrannical government and unequal privileges. In 
order to pay him honor, they wanted to have him at 
Paris, and showed their dawning power by compelling 
Louis XVI to permit him to visit the capital of France. 
Everywhere he was joyously greeted. The entertain¬ 
ment given him proved too exciting for a man over 
eighty-three years of age. On May 30, 1778, four 
months after he arrived in Paris, he died. 

Voltaire did a great thing for France and, inciden¬ 
tally, for the whole world. He fought for freedom 
when it was not yet in existence. His clearness of 
thought and his precision of statement, due to his exact 
knowledge of the value of words, helped him in his 
efforts to transfer his ideas to the people. His courage 
inspired and strengthened men to assert themselves in 
the struggle for individual liberty. 


FREDERICK THE GREAT 
1712-1786 


The first king of Prussia, Frederick I, loved pomp 
and show, and in his beautiful palace at Berlin he 
surrounded himself with gay courtiers and an elaborate 
array of personal attendants. The pride of all the 
Hohenzollerns was great, and each one boasted that he 
had been able to leave Prussia larger and more power¬ 
ful than he had received it. Three things they believed 
in: the absolute power of the sovereign, a huge army 
to enforce his will, and the continued conquest of terri¬ 
tory. It was a very bitter thought to the king that at 
the end of the reign of his son. Crown Prince Frederick 
William, the crown would go to some other branch 
of the family^ for Crown Prince Frederick William 
had no son to succeed him. 

The day came, however, when all these gloomy 
thoughts of the future were changed to the greatest 
joy. It was just before noon on January I2, 1712, 
that a son was born to Crown Prince Frederick William 
and the Princess Sophia Dorothea. When the tiny heir 
was placed for the first time in his father’s arms, the 
happy crown prince very nearly destroyed the hope of 
a nation by caressing him almost to suffocation with 
his huge, clumsy hands. 


21 


22 


BIOGRAPHY 


Let the bells ring, and the flags wave in honor of 
our dear grandson,’’ commanded King Frederick I j and 
in his great joy he ^ave an elaborate welcome and a 
pompous christening to the baby, naming him Fred¬ 
erick. The king, however, did not live long after his 
grandson’s birth. Frederick William then became king, 
and “ little Fritz,” as the baby was called, became 
Crown Prince Frederick. 

King Frederick William I was a rough, uncouth man. 
He was typical of the old Hohenzollerns, many of 
whom were brutal and ruthless in warfare, treacherous 
in times of peace, and lacking the culture and refine¬ 
ment of their French neighbors. His sole object in life 
was to make Prussia one of the first powers of Europe. 
He dispensed entirely with the pomp and ceremony of 
his father’s court. He saved money on every possible 
transaction and put to work all the court idlers. His 
one thought was for his army. While he cut his house¬ 
hold expenditures down to unreasonable figures, and 
was unbearably stingy with his wife, he spent money 
freely and extravagantly on his army and fortifications. 
He had a mania for tall soldiers, and would pay almost 
any price for a man over six feet tall. 

I shall make a great soldier of my son, and I shall 
build up for him the finest army in all Europe,” the 
king declared. He proceeded to carry out his plans 
from the time the little prince was first able to walk. 

“ Little Fritz,” however, had entirely different 
views. He was taught by his English mother to hate 


FREDERICK THE GREAT 


23 



Adolph Menzel 

Frederick William I Visits the Village School 

Prussian manners, speech, and ways of living. The 
queen despised her slovenly husband, and she planted 
the seeds of hatred in the heart of the little prince. 
Frederick had a good ear for music, and idled the 
greater part of his time away playing the flute. He 
wore his long, yellow hair in the French fashion and 
arrayed himself in beautiful dressing gowns. King 
Frederick William I was infuriated j he used the worst 
brutality to bring his son into submission. The crown 
prince preferred the French three-pronged fork to the 
Prussian two-pronged onej and although he had been 
forbidden by his father to use it, the stubborn boy per¬ 
sisted in having his own way. One day at dinner, the 



BIOGRAPHY 


24 

king noticed that his son was using the French fork. 
He seized a plate and hurled it at the boy’s head, only 
narrowly missing him. In a mad rage, he dragged his 
son to the window and strangled him to unconsciousness 
with the curtain cord. 

The prince led a most miserable life. He was very 
sensitive, and day after day he became more morbid 
and silent. He tried again and again to make peace 
with the king, but he refused to give up his French 
books and music even though forced to the drill and 
hard life which the disappointed father preferred. 
Consequently, matters grew worse, and relations be¬ 
tween father and son were more strained as time went 
on. 

Between the hours and hours of hard drilling and 
military training. Prince Frederick now and then stole 
a few moments of pleasure. Late one evening, when 
he was seventeen years of age, he was in his room with 
his music master, playing his flute. He was arrayed in 
a gorgeous red and .gold dressing gown, and he wore 
his hair in the extreme French fashion. Suddenly a 
friend of the prince burst into the room, calling, The 
king! The king is coming! ” 

While his two friends, gathering up music and flute, 
jumped into a closet, Fritz frantically pulled off the 
dressing gown and dressed himself in his severe Prus¬ 
sian military uniform. When the king came in and 
looked suspiciously around, he at first found nothing. 
His eye then fell upon the red gown on the floor, and 


FREDERICK THE GREAT 


25 

in his terrible wrath he threw it into the fire. French 
books, music, everything went, and then the king seized 
the boy by the collar and beat him unmercifully with 
his heavy cane. 

Fritz could stand it no longer and so he determined 
to escape. It was an unheard-of thing — a prince of 
the royal family running away! But the boy’s mind 
was made up. 

When Fritz was eighteen years old, his father took 
him on an extended tour through the country. This 
was his chance to escape, he decided. Two young men, 
friendly to the prince, had managed to get the money 
and disguises for the break for liberty. The boys had 
planned to go to England to stay with Fritz’s uncle, 
George II, who was ruling there. King Frederick had 
suspected some plot of this kind and had placed special 
guards over the prince. Fritz, however, was desperate j 
and in spite of the many dangers, he made a wild dash 
for freedom. 

As is to be expected, he was caught and brought 
before the king. The prince was thrown into prison, 
and the king was determined to have him killed. He 
contended that the prince was an officer in the army 
and that desertion from the army was punishable with 
death. It was only through the influence of some of 
the neighboring kings that Prince Frederick’s life was 
spared. 

For a long time he was kept a prisoner, and many 
months of cruel suspense passed before he was told 


26 


BIOGRAPHY 


that he was not to be killed. Frederick’s life in prison 
was no worse than his life with the king, but he had 
more time for thinking and brooding over the bitterness 
of his lot. When he was at last liberated, he had grown 
into a hard, bitter man. Nothing mattered to him 
nowj he could bear any taunts and abuses without feel¬ 
ing one way or the other. It had taken years of beating 
and cruelty, but at last the stubborn prince realized that 
the king’s will was law. He submitted unfeelingly to 
whatever was thrust upon him. 

Prince Frederick realized that if he obeyed the 
king’s wishes, he would be given more freedom to 
follow his own desires. He raised no objection, there¬ 
fore, when King Frederick William I brought forth his 
choice for the princess royal of Prussia. She was 
Princess Elizabeth Christina, a very shy, awkward girl, 
seventeen years of age. Frederick married her to gain 
more freedom for himself, and he let her see plainly 
enough that she was not a welcome wife. He succeeded 
quite well in making life miserable for the simple 
young girl. 

The reward which Frederick had hoped for was 
immediate. The king gave his son a palace in Berlin, 
where the boy found many leisure hours to study his 
French literature and to practice his music. Frederick’s 
happiness grew daily, for he was painstaking in his 
obedience to the king. 

His Majesty very generously purchased for Fred¬ 
erick a beautifully situated country castle where 


FREDERICK THE GREAT 


27 

Frederick lived quietly for the next four years. He 
studied histories of past wars and corresponded with 
the learned men of France, among whom was Voltaire 
who later became his close friend. 

In the spring of 1740, as the old king found his 
health failing, he kept the crown prince constantly at 
his side. There was no touch now of the old bitterness 
which had once existed. In fact, as Frederick William I 
lay dying, he exclaimed: 

Am I not happy, to have such a son to leave 
behind? ” 

At his succession. King Frederick II, a young man 
of twenty-eight years, was not at all popular. The men 
of the court had in their minds the picture of a weak, 
long-legged boy, hair curled, dressed in a red gown, 
and playing a flute. Frederick II had before him the 
great task of removing this impression and proving to 
his people that he was no longer an effeminate prince, 
but that he was now a strong, learned man, a soldier, 
and every inch a king. It was a task, but Frederick 
proved himself equal to it! 

Less than a year after his accession a messenger ap¬ 
peared at the palace gates with an important letter for 
the king. Frederick was at the time wrapped in many 
blankets suffering from a severe chill. The letter was, 
however, carried to him. The king read the message, 
jumped up from his bed, fully recovered, and went 
about a business which occupied the greater part of his 
life. What did the letter contain that had such an 


28 


BIOGRAPHY 


effect upon his Majesty? It was an announcement that 
Charles VI of Austria was dead, and that Maria Theresa 
was now empress of the vast dominions. 

Frederick proved to all his people that he was an able 
king and a great soldier j but, sad to relate, he proved 
also that he was a shameless man, a man entirely with¬ 
out moral principle. He took advantage of the fact 
that the ruler of Austria was a woman, and, without 
declaring war, promptly seized the rich province of 
Silesia. 

Silesia, he said, belonged to him by some vague, 
ancient claim. He succeeded in holding it against the 
Austrian armies, although the war was hotly contested 
for years. It was on the victorious march homeward 
that the king was first given the imposing title of 
Frederick the Great. 

When he was not fighting, Frederick devoted him¬ 
self to the betterment of his people. With Voltaire, 
whom he had invited to the Court of Berlin, he had 
studied the ideas of the great reformers in government, 
and these he tried to put into practice in his own king¬ 
dom, not, however, with Voltaire’s desire to give liberty 
to the people but only to increase his own power. He 
improved the land by digging canals, draining marshes, 
and building bridges. On the land thus reclaimed he 
settled hundreds and thousands of colonists, and in 
this way not only increased his territory but encouraged 
a great growth in population. He himself was a tre¬ 
mendous worker. He rose at four, took physical exer- 


FREDERICK THE GREAT 


29 

else and medical treatment until eight, was at his desk 
until ten, and reviewed his troops until noon. The 
afternoon found him again at his desk until five, and 
in the evening he enjoyed music, supper, and society. 
He still retained his great love of music and of litera¬ 
ture, and did much to further the development of 
culture in Prussia. 

The high-tempered young empress of Austria was 
revengeful. The memory of Frederick’s seizure of her 
province rankled in her mind. All of Europe implored 
her not to start another of those terrible struggles j but 
Maria Theresa begged for “ one more battle, just one 
more chance.” And so there came about what was 
almost a world war. Maria Theresa persuaded Russia, 
France, Sweden, and Saxony to side with her against 
Frederick, who thus fought a large part of Europe 
single-handed. But he was a great military genius — 
one of the greatest of all ages from Alexander the 
Great to Napoleon — and aided by British money he 
won a hard-fought victory against their combined 
forces. This gave Silesia finally into Frederick’s hands 
and added to his domains a territory one third, as large 
as Prussia itself. From that time Prussia took her 
place as one of the important powers of Europe. 

To hold Silesia at the risk of everything remained 
one of his chief aims in life. One day the little nephew 
of the king was playing ball about the room in which 
Frederick was writing. Time and time again, the child, 
who was heir to the throne, allowed the ball to crash 



Adolph Menzel 


Frederick the Great 


Copyrighted by Max Schmetterling, Printer and Publisher, N. Y 



FREDERICK THE GREAT 


31 

into the king^s writing desk. Three times Frederick 
returned the ball to the child, but the fourth time he 
quietly put it in his pocket. 

The boy asked very politely, “ Will you give me my 
ball? ” There was no answer. Again he asked, and 
still no answer. Frederick wrote quietly and ignored 
the child. The little prince strode boldly before the 
king, and, with his face blazing with anger, he de¬ 
manded, “ Sire, give me my ball immediately! ” 

The old man stopped writing and laughed heartily. 
He lifted the child to his knee. Brave little lad,” he 
said. When you are king, they will never get Silesia 
away from you! ” 

Not satisfied with having gained Silesia, Frederick 
looked with longing eyes, as did Austria and Russia, 
upon the weak state of Poland which lay between them. 
Deaf to her protests, the sovereigns of these powerful 
states finally attacked her, each heartlessly seizing a 
coveted portion near his own kingdom. Frederick took 
as his share a small strip of land which lay between the 
eastern and western parts of Prussia, and which he had 
long wanted in order to make his boundaries continuous. 

Late in life, Frederick erected (in a peaceful country 
district) a “ royal cottage.” This beautiful, quiet estate 
was his favorite home, and there he spent the years of 
peace, the years of rest, which followed his life of 
struggle. There he died on the seventeenth of August, 
1786, a lonely old man, without wife or children 
around him. 


32 


BIOGRAPHY 


At the time of Frederick’s death, Prussia was one of 
the most powerful nations of Europe. How insignifi¬ 
cant a part it had played before his accession! How 
much it had been improved by the efforts of this 
“benevolent despot”! But everything that he did 
for his people was done to strengthen his own absolute 
power. He wanted to make Prussia prosperous and 
strong in order to build up a great war machine for 
conquest. He improved the condition of his people, 
but kept them in almost slave-like submission to his 
will. 


MARIE ANTOINETTE 


Marie-Antoinette-Josephe-Jeanne de Lorraine 
1755-1793 

On November 2, 1755, the day of the terrible earth¬ 
quake at Lisbon, there was born to Queen Maria 
Theresa at the Austrian court a little girl destined both 
for greatness and for disaster. An affectionate, lovable 
child, she seemed from the beginning to have an almost 
irresistible charm for all who knew her. There was a 
warm bond of affection between her and her father, 
the Emperor Francis. One day when she was seven 
years old, the emperor, who had left the palace to 
start on a journey, turned back, on an impulse, and 
commanded that the little Archduchess Maria be 
brought to him. Taking her in his arms, he said, 
“ I wished to embrace this child once more! ” It was 
the last time she saw her father, for he died suddenly 
a few days later. 

For her mother Marie seemed to have had respect 
rather than affection, and, indeed, Maria Theresa, who 
had great political ambitions, interested herself much 
more in affairs of state than in her children. Marie’s 
education was sadly neglected, and though she had a 
naturally quick mind, she was not taught concentration 
or self-control. She studied French and Italian, but 
learned little of the history of her own country or of 


33 


34 


BIOGRAPHY 



Le Brun 

Marie Antoinette and Her Children 

(Purchased from Taber-Prang Art Co.) 

any other — not a very good education for a future 
queen. 

When her mother asked her one day over what people 
she would like to rule, she answered without hesitation, 
“ The French.” This reply pleased Maria Theresa 
greatly, for plans had long been afoot to strengthen 
the friendship of France and Austria — countries which 
for many years had been bitter enemies. 




MARIE ANTOINETTE 


35 

In 1770, therefore, a marriage was arranged between 
Marie Antoinette and the French dauphin, the great- 
grandson of Louis XIV. At the age of fifteen, Marie, 
beautiful, vivacious, and high-spirited, was received at 
Versailles to become the bride of Louis, a shy, quiet 
youth, awkward and ill at ease, but an honest and 
kindly prince. 

Marie captured all hearts almost instantly. The old 
king, Louis XV, was delighted with her youth and 
gayety, and when Marie, soon after the marriage cere¬ 
monies at Versailles, made a visit to Paris she at once 
established herself as the object of the love and admira¬ 
tion of the French people. 

Four years later, on May 10, 1774, Louis XV, a 
victim of the dreaded smallpox, lay at the point of 
death. As the dauphin and Marie were together 
awaiting the news from his chamber, suddenly they 
heard outside the door a noise almost like thunder. It 
was made by a great crowd of courtiers rushing from the 
room of the dead sovereign to greet the new king, 
Louis XVI. Marie and her husband threw themselves 
on their knees, and, with tears in their eyes, cried out, 
“ O God, guide us, protect us 5 we are too young to 
govern! ” The young queen was nineteenj Louis 
barely twenty. They might well pray for guidance, for 
into their inexperienced hands was given, to rule, a 
country trembling on the edge of disaster. The fearful 
extravagances of Louis XIV and of his dissolute suc¬ 
cessor Louis XV had plunged France into poverty. 


BIOGRAPHY 


36 

misery, and discontent. Their legacy to the young 
Louis XVI, now crowned king of France, was the 
terrible experience of the French Revolution. 

During the early years of their reign Marie found 
Louis a good husband but a poor king. While affairs 
of state were being mismanaged by dishonest ministers, 
Louis XVI spent many hours each day in his workshop 
where he constructed locks and other pieces of intricate 
mechanism. His hardened and blackened hands were 
often a source of reproach from his beautiful young 
wife. That he could so employ his time when France 
was on the brink of ruin indicates how ill-fitted he was 
to govern. 

After the birth of her first child, a little daughter, 
in 1777, Marie proved herself a devoted mother5 but, 
feted and adored as she was, she still spent much of her 
time in a frivolous pursuit of pleasure. When she first 
came to the French court, she had dressed very plainly, 
for she had been used to the extremely simple ways of 
her Austrian home. Her head somewhat turned by her 
wealth and power, she now became very extravagant in 
her dress. As soon as a new fashion was introduced by 
Marie, the young women of the court instantly wished 
to imitate the queen, and many spent vast sums, 
even going into debt in order to keep in style. The 
headdresses, with their superstructures of gauze and 
flowers and feathers, grew to such heights that women 
could not find carriages high enough to accommodate 
them. 



Louis XVI, King of France 






BIOGRAPHY 


38 

From this time on, the queen was the object of 
many attacks, for the wretched poor were paying the 
taxes that supported the folly and extravagances of the 
court. They began to turn against her also because 
of the stories that were told of her undignified pranks. 
Marie, restless under the restraints of an elaborate 
court etiquette, often threw prudence to the winds, and, 
dressing in peasant costume, sought for youthful re¬ 
laxation in rash escapades. These added fuel to the 
growing feeling of resentment against her. 

When a son was born in October, 1781, the people 
were so delighted at the birth of an heir to the throne 
that for a time Marie Antoinette was again feted and 
worshiped. 

During these happy days, the great subject of con¬ 
versation was the American war for independence. La¬ 
fayette was aiding in person, and Beaumarchais sent 
supplies. Benjamin Franklin, with straight, unpow¬ 
dered hair, round hat, and brown suit, was an odd 
figure in the midst of the embroidered ladies and gen¬ 
tlemen of Versailles. The queen was always opposed 
to giving assistance to the Americans. She could not 
understand how one sovereign could be willing to assist 
in the efforts to cut down the sovereign power of an¬ 
other. She had the kindest of hearts and was very sym¬ 
pathetic to unfortunate individuals; but she firmly be¬ 
lieved in the benefits of monarchy. She sympathized 
with the sufferings of her people, but she did not 
understand their ideal of democracy. 


MARIE ANTOINETTE 


39 

Famine and riots in France grew daily. The queen, 
however, was enjoying life at the beautiful villa, 
the Trianon, given her by Louis. Starving peasants 
were told that her little theater at the Trianon was 
ornamented with diamonds, and that there were col¬ 
umns studded with sapphires and rubies. Uncompli¬ 
mentary poems were written about the queen, and a 
cartoon was circulated representing the king at table 
with the queen — he with a glass in his hand, the 
queen raising a morsel to her lips. The people were 
crowding about the table with mouths wide open. Be¬ 
low the drawing were the words: The king drinks, 
the queen eats — the people cry out! ” 

While Louis hunted and Marie played, events of 
the utmost importance were taking place in France. 
The notables had met and ordered a retrenchment in 
the expenses of the crown, but had accomplished little 
else. The people demanded the calling of the States 
General, an assembly which provided for the repre¬ 
sentation of the common people, as well as the clergy 
and nobility, but which no king of France had called 
for one hundred seventy-five years. When this States 
General now finally met in 1789? under the direction 
of Mirabeau, it consecrated itself to the task of meeting 

until the constitution of the kingdom is established 
and founded on a solid basis.” This signalled the be¬ 
ginning of the French Revolution. From 1789 
1792 the revolution was a sane reconstruction of gov¬ 
ernment, including the abolishment of many abuses. 


BIOGRAPHY 


40 

It established a limited instead of an absolute monarchy. 
Feudalism and serfdom were abolished j special priv¬ 
ileges long enjoyed by the nobility were denied3 the 
parish priests who did the real religious work were to 
be properly paid 3 taxation was equalized and a constitu¬ 
tion giving the people power in the government was 
adopted. 

In the meantime, Marie had become an object of 
hatred among the people. On numerous occasions, the 
king and queen were insulted by angry mobs. At one 
time, a ragged crowd swept from Paris to Versailles, 
burst into the royal apartments, and all but succeeded 
in assassinating the queen. “ The Bastile,” a hated 
prison, into which hundreds, perhaps thousands, had 
been cast to die without knowing the cause of their im¬ 
prisonment, was stormed and thrown open. Finally 
the royal family was forced from Versailles to Paris 
and made virtual prisoners at the Tuileries. 

In 1790 the king accepted the constitution, and the 
revolution was declared over. 

All might have gone well now had it not been for 
the folly of Louis and Marie in arousing the suspicions 
of the people as to their loyalty to France. Foreign 
monarchs, fearing the loss of their own autocratic power 
if constitutional government succeeded in France, were 
conspiring with French nobles who had fled from Paris 
to restore Louis XVI to his former absolutism. This 
treachery infuriated the French, who were convinced 
that Marie was plotting with Austria against France, 


MARIE ANTOINETTE 


41 

and a new assembly at once began proceedings against 
these emigrant nobles. Louis XVI foolishly listened 
to the secret messengers of these emigrants, and 
planned to escape from Paris, hoping that he might 
secure help from foreign monarchs to subdue what he 
was told was a revolt in France against his authority as 
king. 

Accordingly, at midnight, the royal family, disguised 
and provided with false passports, stole, one by one, 
from their castle through an unguarded gate. They 
met at a prearranged place where two coaches awaited 
them. Twelve miles from Paris they exchanged their 
conveyances for one large vehicle which had been built, 
at the king’s direction, to contain the entire party. All 
went well until they reached a quiet country inn, one 
hundred forty miles from Paris and only a few miles 
from the frontier, beyond which lay safety. Here the 
king imprudently thrust his head out of the coach door. 
Through the resemblance of his face to that on the 
coins then in use, he was immediately recognized by a 
young man, named Drouet, who, mounting his horse, 
galloped to Varennes, some dozen miles in advance, to 
inform the authorities. When the coach arrived at 
Varennes, it was instantly surrounded by soldiers and 
the occupants forced to disclose themselves. Their 
identity was at once revealed! The attempted escape 
a failure, there was nothing for the royal party to do 
but return home. As they reentered Paris, they were 
received by the populace in ominous silence.” 


42 


BIOGRAPHY 


Louis, really anxious at heart for the good of his 
people but unequal to the situation, gave himself up 
to discouragement. Adversity, however, seemed to 
transfigure Marie. She, who had been frivolous and 
childish, displayed, in the days that followed, dignity, 
courage, and contempt of danger. 

Soon after the return of the royal family to Paris, 
the Jacobins, a powerful political club in France, gained 
control of the government. From the first it had 
wished the establishment of a republic. Under such 
leaders as Marat, Danton, and Robespierre, the Jaco¬ 
bins instituted throughout France a “ Reign of Terror,” 
during which all persons known to sympathize with 
royalty were executed. Thousands met death at the 
guillotine. 

On August 10, 1792, an uncontrolled mob attacked 
the Tuileries, and the king and queen were forced to 
the assembly for protection. In September of 1792 
France was proclaimed a republic, and the royal family 
were confined as prisoners in the Temple. Here they 
remained together until the trial of the king. Each 
day the king would instruct his son in his lessons, par¬ 
ticularly French literature, the queen devoting herself 
to the education of her daughter. In the afternoon the 
king would read aloud to his family. 

The pressing question in the assembly that governed 
France was: What shall be done with King Louis? If 
he and his family were permitted to live, the republic 
which had now been established would be in constant 


MARIE ANTOINETTE 


43 

danger. So thought the radicals who controlled the 
assembly. 

On January 2i, 1793, Louis XVI was led to the 
guillotine. He was always a good man, but not a great 
man unless it might be said that he was great in the 
last moments of his life, his final words being: I die 
innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge. I pardon 
those who have occasioned my death, and I pray to God 
that the blood you are now about to shed may not be 
visited upon France.” 

After the death of Louis, weary months elapsed for 
Marie. On the third of July, the dauphin was taken 
away from her and given over to a shoemaker named 
Simon, who, it is said, adopted every method of cruelty 
calculated to ruin him physically and mentally. On 
the second of August, she was separated from her sister- 
in-law and her daughter and removed to an ordinary 
prison.^ In this bleak place, Marie had no other dress 
than an old black gown. She was entirely destitute of 
shoes, and her stockings were full of holes which she 
was forced to mend daily. - Thus was the “ fairest and 
favorite princess of one of the proudest and most 
ancient houses of Europe ” brought low — a victim to 

^ The daughter was later exchanged for some French officers 
held prisoners in Austria. She afterward married her cousin, an Aus¬ 
trian noble. What became of her unhappy brother is not known. He 
probably died while still a young boy from the abuse of the shoemaker. 
Some people believe that he was secretly taken by his Royalist friends 
and brought to this country. The exact facts about the life of the 
dauphin after he was turned over to the shoemaker, Simon, will prob¬ 
ably remain a riddle in history. 



Paul Delaroche 


The Trial of Marie Antoinette 










MARIE ANTOINETTE 


45 

the great revolution for human freedom, a movement 
with which she could not sympathize because she did 
not understand it. 

In this period of her disgrace her serene dignity, 
her sweet self-possession, and her courage moved even 
Robespierre to an effort to save her. But Marie, in her 
fears for the life of the king and her children, had 
undoubtedly conspired with Austrian absolutists, and 
her doom Was pronounced by the assembly. 

On the morning of October i6 she was placed in a 
tumbril, with her hands tied behind her, and conducted 
through the jeering crowds to the guillotine. Sorrow 
■had whitened her once beautiful hair, but her pale, 
proud face was still lovely. She ascended the scaf¬ 
fold with a firm and dignified step as if she had been 
about to take her place on a throne by the side of her 
husband.” 

The populace that had so often cried out with love 
and enthusiasm, “ Long live the Queen,” now ap¬ 
plauded her execution. 


SIR ISAAC NEWTON 
1642-1727 


Isaac Newton was born in Lincolnshire, England, 
December 25, 1642. The house in which he was born 
is still standing, and in his room is a marble tablet 
giving the date and place of his birth and also bearing 
the following inscription: 

Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night j 
God said, ‘ Let Newton be,’ and all was light.” 

John Newton, the father of the scientist, died a short 
time before Isaac was born, leaving his widow two 
small farms. When Isaac was four years old, his 
mother, who was known throughout the parish as being 
a very fine woman, married the clergyman of that dis¬ 
trict, and one of the two farms left by his father being 
deeded to Isaac, he was sent to live with an aunt with 
whom he stayed until he was fifteen years old. He 
then returned to live with his mother who had been 
again left a widow, and who needed his help in the 
farming. 

When Isaac Newton was thirteen years old and very 
small and weak for his age, he held the last place in 
the lowest class in the school. One morning just before 
the opening of school the boy who held Erst place in 
46 


SIR ISAAC NEWTON 


47 

the same class, and who was much larger than Isaac, 
kicked him and then retreated into the school building. 
When school was over that day, Isaac challenged the 
other boy to fight, and, the boy accepting, they went to 
the churchyard where affairs of this sort generally took 
place. A ring was formed and the fight began, urged 
on by the schoolmaster’s son 3 and though Isaac was 
much the smaller and weaker of the two boys, owing to 
his spirit and resolution he gave his enemy a thorough 
thrashing, rubbing his nose against the wall to crown 
the victory. 

Isaac went home that night exulting over his victory, 
but the next morning in the classroom he again saw his 
enemy at the head of the class while he himself re¬ 
mained at the foot. He began to wonder, and finally 
decided that his victory was not complete until he had 
conquered his enemy in the classroom as well. After 
a long and hard struggle, he finally won and reached 
the head of the class. From then on he was a student 
and never relapsed into idleness for the rest of his 
long life. 

From childhood Isaac showed a great talent in all 
things relating to mechanics. At one time when a wind 
mill was being constructed near his home, he made a 
small model of the mill himself. Later he became 
dissatisfied with it because it would not run without the 
wind 3 so he made an arrangement by which the mill 
could be kept in motion by a mouse. He also invented 
a water clock which was made to run by a drop of water 


BIOGRAPHY 


48 

falling at intervals upon a wheel. This clock kept such 
perfect time that the family always went to it when 
they wished to be sure of the exact time. Isaac also 
made a sun dial which is still visible on the side of the 
house, and by which time could be told quite accurately. 

Besides working out these inventions Isaac spent 
many hours making toys and other things with which 
to amuse his friends. For the young ladies he knew 
he never tired of making small models of furniture and 
houses, and for the boys he made unusually strong 
kites, which, being flown at night, with a light of some 
sort attached to the tail, would throw a great scare into 
the simple people of the parish. 

When Isaac went back again to live with his 
mother, he soon proved that he would never make a 
successful farmer. If he were sent to market to help 
sell farm products, he would take a book and disappear 
in some garret to study until time to return home. Or 
if he were sent to the fields to mind the flocks, he would 
be found hours later stretched out in the shade of some 
hedge, or sitting on the bough of a tree, figuring out 
some mathematical problem while the sheep trampled 
the crops in a near-by field. 

When he was sixteen, Isaac made his first scientific 
experiment. On the day that Oliver Cromwell died 
there was a severe storm and a great wind raging over 
England. To find the force of the wind, Isaac first 
jumped against the wind and measured the length of 
his jump, then jumped with the wind measuring that 


SIR ISAAC NEWTON 


49 

jump also. By taking these two measurements and 
comparing them with the distance he could jump on a 
calm day, he learned the force of the wind. 

Fortunately Newton’s mother realized that her son 
was more fitted for the career of a scholar than that of 
a farmer j so when he was twenty she entered him as 
a student in Trinity College, Cambridge. Because she 
was unable to meet all the expenses, Newton was en¬ 
tered as a sizar” j that is, he was obliged to perform 
certain menial tasks in order to earn part of his ex¬ 
penses. But his duties were light and he was left 
ample time for his studies. 

Newton entered college a student at heart, but he 
did not in the least mind sharing in the various amuse¬ 
ments of his fellows. His work at first was a form 
of amusement to him, requiring little efFort on his part j 
and during his entire school career he followed his own 
judgment in his selection of studies, entirely neglecting 
some branches of the course. 

As he spent more time in school, however, he began 
to take his work too seriously. He became absent- 
minded in the extreme, and sometimes at meal time he 
would sit down at the table and gaze into space until 
the others were through eating, when he would leave 
the table without realizing that he had not touched a 
bite. Also, he would often sit up for an entire night 
over one problem in mathematics, and look as refreshed 
in the morning as though he had had a good night’s 
rest. 


BIOGRAPHY 


50 


One of the fine things in the history of the Univer¬ 
sity of Cambridge is that its officials recognized that 
young Newton was a great student. The university 
gave him the means of following a life of study. 
When Newton graduated, one of his old teachers, with 
tears in his eyes, gave a talk to the assembled students 
in which he held Newton up to them as a worthy object 
of their love and admiration. 

The university granted Newton financial aid by giv¬ 
ing him first, a scholarship, then a minor fellowship. 



Sir Isaac Newton 



SIR ISAAC NEWTON 


51 

and finally a full fellowship. W^hen he was twenty- 
seven years old, he was permanently established in the 
university as a professor of mathematics. His duties 
were not heavy as he was given only a few classes to 
teach, so that he was left plenty of time for study. 

Newton was only twenty-three when he made his 
greatest discovery. In the autumn of 1665 he was 
spending several weeks at home, college having been 
dismissed on account of the plague. He was seated 
in his mother’s orchard one day watching the ripe fruit 
drop to the ground, when he fell into one of his medi¬ 
tations upon the nature of the force that caused the 
apples to fall with visibly increasing speed directly 
toward the earth. 

Scientists had for some time been debating as to the 
force that caused the planets to remain in their proper 
places in the universe, instead of moving around freely 
and bumping into each other now and then. Newton, 
debating with himself on this subject, and watching the 
apples fall from the tree to the earth, and thinking also 
of the force which caused a ball shot from a cannon to 
curve gradually toward the ground, struck upon the 
idea that there was some force in the earth pulling 
objects toward itself. This led to his discovery of the 
famous law of gravitation, which means that all bodies, 
whether large or small, have a tendency to attract one 
another. He then set himself to calculate with how 
much force the earth attracted the moon, and how much 
force was required to keep the moon in its orbit. He 



Mary Stuart and William of Orange 

(Painted by Van Dyke when they were married. Their accession to the English throne in 
1688 during the time of Newton meant much more freedom for the English people.) 





SIR ISAAC NEWTON 


53 

did not solve all these questions at the timej but many 
years later he continued his study along these lines, and 
besides explaining the law of gravitation, he worked 
out the laws of motion and many other scientific prin¬ 
ciples which have been invaluable to scientists the world 
over. 

Newton was interested throughout his life in sci¬ 
entific activities of various kinds. He made important 
discoveries about light, he invented a new form of 
higher mathematics, and at one time he devoted a great 
deal of patient work in an effort to discover a method 
by which the baser metals could be changed into gold. 

He was never, however, so buried in science as to 
forget his duties as a citizen. When James II was 
making plans that might be detrimental to England, 
Newton worked so hard against them that he was 
elected to Parliament where he served as a useful 
member for eighteen months. 

For many years he was governor of the Royal Mint, 
at an income of over five thousand pounds a year. At 
this time he held a distinguished position in London 
society, and was admired and liked everywhere for his 
sincerity and frankness. As a man of wealth in these 
latter years of his life, he was noted for his generosity 
in loans and gifts. Notwithstanding this, he left an 
estate of some thirty-two thousand pounds to be divided 
among his relatives. 

After a long life devoted to science and public serv¬ 
ice, Newton died March 20, 1727, at the age of eighty- 


BIOGRAPHY 


54 

five. He was buried in Westminster Abbey with all 
the ceremony due to the greatest scientist of his time. 
Voltaire, who was in England at the time, attended his 
funeral, and the honors paid to Newton made a lasting 
impression upon him. It is said that, “ in extreme old 
age, his eyes would kindle and his countenance light up 
when he spoke of his once having lived in a land where 
a professor of mathematics could be buried in a temple 
where the ashes of kings reposed, and the highest sub¬ 
jects in the kingdom felt it an honor to assist in bearing 
hither his body.” 


PETER THE GREAT 
1672-1725 


The birth of Peter, at Moscow, on the thirtieth of 
May, 1672, was an especially happy event, for the rea¬ 
son that the two eldest sons of the Czar Alexis of Rus¬ 
sia were in feeble health. This third son was a strong, 
healthy baby, and was able to walk when he was six 
months old. From his earliest years his father sur¬ 
rounded him with luxury. He had his own apartment 
with troops of attendants and a special bodyguard of 
male and female servants, dwarfed in stature, because 
these were thought more suitable for a child. An eye¬ 
witness tells us that when Peter was a little more than 
three years old, he drove his own carriage drawn by 
four dwarf ponies. In his nursery he had every kind 
of toy that a boy could desire, and he spent hours play¬ 
ing soldier with bows and arrows, pikes, swords, and 
miniature cannon. 

When Peter’s father, the Czar Alexis, died in 1676, 
Feodor, the eldest son, became czar of Russia. This 
weak young sovereign lived but a few years after his 
accession. The two sons of the Czar Alexis, between 
whom the choice now lay, were Ivan, fifteen years old, 
lame, deaf, and almost blind, and Peter, who, even at 
the early age of ten, gave some promise of future great¬ 
ness. 


55 


56 


BIOGRAPHY 


After the nobles had paid their respects to the dead 
sovereign, they retired to another room to choose a new 
czar. It was decided that Ivan and Peter should be 
joint czars, with the oldest daughter of Alexis, Sophia, 
as regent. 

The two boys were crowned together on June 26, 
1682. Under the dome of the Cathedral of the As¬ 
sumption was erected a platform, covered with crimson 
cloth, to which two paths of scarlet velvet led from the 
sanctuary. On the center of the platform was set the 
gilded throne of the Czar Alexis. This was divided 
by a bar down the middle so that it could be occupied 
by the two boys, and in the back of the chair a hole was 
cut in order that the youthful sovereigns could be 
prompted by a watchful attendant. Ivan was crowned 
with the ancient regalia, and imitations of these had 
been made for Peter. 

Thus began the reign of Peter the Great. 

As Sophia saw her young brother growing daily more 
clever and ambitious, her heart was filled with jealous 
hatred. It is said that she did all in her power to keep 
him in ignorance and make him as corrupt as possible. . 
He was surrounded by a set of the lowest and most 
wicked young men in the czardom, who led him into 
drinking, idleness, and many other bad habits. Al¬ 
though he was brought up without regular instruction 
or good influence, nothing could check his great desire 
for knowledge. In the streets, the blacksmith shop, 
and carpenter shop he was always eagerly learning. 


PETER THE GREAT 


57 

At the age of seventeen Peter began to show signs 
of throwing off the authority of his sister Sophia. 
When he married in direct defiance of her wishes, she 
was so angry that she plotted his death, and ordered six 
hundred of the court guards to seize and imprison him. 
Peter, however, was able to gather about him so large 
and loyal a following that Sophia and her party were 
completely routed. Sophia was confined, by Peter’s 
orders, in a convent at Moscow where she remained 
shut up until the time of her death fifteen years after¬ 
ward. Peter at once took upon himself the real sov¬ 
ereignty of the empire, for his brother Ivan who was 
weak and sickly assumed no part whatever in the gov¬ 
ernment. 

Now that Peter was the sole czar of Russia, he set 
out with passionate zeal to improve his country. As a 
result of an invasion of Tartars from the Orient during 
an earlier age, the Russians were at this time still Asiatic 
in customs and manners of living. The men wore 
turbans and flowing robes 5 the women were kept in 
harems j the soldiers had armor like that of the Chi¬ 
nese. Although Russia lies in Europe as well as in 
Asia, it was then completely shut off from the other 
European nations by the barren plains of Poland in 
the west and the total lack of seaports in the north and 
south. All of this Peter determined to change, for it 
was the ambition of his life to make Russia a great 
European power. 

As soon as he took the government into his hands. 


BIOGRAPHY 


58 

he plunged into the task of remodeling his crude army. 
He sent for expert European officers to drill and equip 
his soldiers in the best manner, and with characteristic 
enthusiasm he himself enlisted as a private, gradually 
working up from this position to the rank of general. 

In order to investigate the latest European models 
of men-of-war and to teach his people western customs, 
Peter determined to make a tour of Germany, Hol¬ 
land, and England. Never was a visitor so eager to 
learn. He visited mills and factories, and studied archi¬ 
tecture and history. For a week, he put on the wide 
breeches of a Dutch laborer and worked in a shipyard 
near Amsterdam. Everywhere he engaged experts to 
go home with him to improve the conditions in Russia. 

The moment Peter’s eye caught any new object, 
there came the excited question, Wat is dat? ” When 
he was told, he would exclaim, I will see dat.” In 
his curiosity he sometimes forgot to be careful, and 
one day he became entangled and drawn into a dan¬ 
gerous machine. 

When Peter visited the hospitals he insisted on being 
allowed to draw teeth, to let blood, and to dissect 
bodies. Convinced that he could perform surgical op¬ 
erations as well as the doctor, he tried out his skill upon 
a poor woman suffering from the dropsy. It is not sur¬ 
prising that she diedj and the czar, in remorse at the 
unhappy result of the experiment, tried to console the 
bereaved husband by attending the funeral of his 
victim. 


PETER THE GREAT 


59 



Peter the Great 


The czar’s Asiatic ancestry made him appear very 
crude among the western Europeans. While living in 
London, he occupied a beautiful place called “ Saye’s 
Court.” When Peter and his troops left this elegant 
estate, the splendid mansion was almost a wreck, and 
the well-kept grounds with their beautiful green hedges 
were trampled and ruined. 

When Peter heard that the Russian nobles and 
churchmen, angry at his desertion of the long-estab- 



6o 


BIOGRAPHY 


lished customs of his forefathers, were revolting 
against his new western ideas, he returned home at 
once. Upon his arrival, he punished the rebels cruelly, 
he himself brutally cutting off the heads of many with 
his own sword. 

From the first, he had hated a powerful military or¬ 
ganization in Russia which had interfered with his ab¬ 
solutism. Seizing this opportunity, he now disbanded 
them and organized a regular standing army. This was 
the beginning of a series of startling reforms. For the 
long beards and Oriental robes of his people he substi¬ 
tuted shaved faces and short coats. At his command, 
many women gave up the seclusion of their harem life 
and accustomed themselves to mingle freely and natu¬ 
rally with men. He built schools, factories, and roads. 
He invited foreigners to come to Russia and sent many 
young Russians abroad to study. 

In order to make these changes permanent, Peter 
knew that he must open a way from Russia to the west. 
For many years his ancestors had looked with an en¬ 
vious eye upon the coast of the Black Sea, and Peter 
himself had seized Port Azof, but such a port was 
worth little while the Turks still held the Dardanelles. 
Peter, therefore, leaving to his successors the cherished 
dream of getting Constantinople, turned to the north. 
Taking advantage of the fact that Charles XII of 
Sweden was being attacked by a ring of enemies, he 
began seizing his land along the eastern coast of the 
Baltic Sea for his foothold in the west. 


PETER THE GREAT 


6i 

Dissatisfied with the old, inland, Oriental capital, 
Moscow, so far away from the European capitals and 
so full of the traditions of the east, Peter determined 
to create a new capital that would be “ a window,’’ as 
he said, through which Russia could look toward the 
west. He chose, for this purpose, a bit of one of his 
newly acquired provinces along the Baltic. Although 
this site was very marshy, Peter persevered and, at 
great cost in effort, money, and human lives, established 
Russia’s first real seaport. To this new capital, which 
he called St. Petersburg, he transported thousands of 
Russian peasants 3 foreigners from all western countries 
were invited to reside there. Magnificent buildings 
were erected. When Charles XII, the youthful 
prodigy and military genius of Sweden, tried to regain 
the Baltic territory which Peter had seized, Peter, with 
his large and well-drilled army, met him and com¬ 
pletely defeated him. At last Russia was becoming a 
European power. 

In 1725 the czar, whose constitution had been weak¬ 
ened by his strenuous life and disregard for his health, 
was attacked by sickness which brought an end to the 
earthly career of Peter the Great. 

He was truly great, for in spite of his own crude and 
half-savage ways, he realized the value of civilization 
and worked unceasingly for the improvement of his 
backward country. 


WILLIAM PITT 


1708-1778 

William Pitt, one of England’s greatest statesmen, 
and a true friend of the American colonies in their 
struggle for freedom, was born November 15, 1708, 
in London. 

William’s boyhood days were spent at his parents’ 
home in the quiet little village of Stratford, the birth¬ 
place of Shakespeare. There was nothing in his youth 
to indicate the fighting force he developed in later 
years. Frail and weak in body, he seldom joined in the 
games of the other children, but buried himself in his 
books and lived in a world of his own imagination. 

For six years he was a student at Eton College. 
Here again William was cut off from participation in 
the sports of the athletic boys. But he applied him¬ 
self even more diligently to his books, and in his soli¬ 
tary walks along the Thames River he dreamed and 
planned a career that he was one day to realize. 

William spent his vacations from Eton with his 
grandfather, a wealthy and prominent man who was 
governor of Madras. During those visits, the stern 
old man learned to know and to love this quiet boy, and 
he shared in all his sorrows and joys, his disappoint¬ 
ments and achievements. It was his grandfather who 

62 


WILLIAM PITT 


63 

made it possible for William to go on with his education 
at Trinity College, Oxford, for at his death he left 
William enough money to continue his course. 

From his school days Pitt had been cruelly tormented 
with gout. This attacked him with increased violence 
at Oxford and compelled him to quit the university 
without taking a degree. After a trip to France and 
Italy, which did not seem to benefit his health much, 
Pitt, who had very little money, realized the necessity 
of choosing a profession. An opportunity of entering 
Parliament soon occurred, and in the election of 1734 
Pitt was chosen representative for the borough of Old 
Sarum, which had been the property of his family. 

When Pitt first entered Parliament, Sir Robert Wal¬ 
pole, who had been twenty years at the head of affairs 
as prime minister, was fast losing his friends. Pitt 
attached himself to the Whigs — the Patriots, as they 
were called — in opposition. From that time until the 
death of Walpole a great struggle raged between the 
two. Walpole, who was a skillful statesman and 
showed great ability, especially in financial matters, had 
low standards of political honesty. He believed that 
every man had his price, and under him bribery was the 
regular method of securing votes. It is said he even 
tried to bribe Pitt, but was unsuccessful. It was against 
such selfishness and corruption in politics that Pitt re¬ 
belled. In his eloquent speeches he appealed to the 
patriotism and sense of honor of his countrymen, and 
by his enthusiasm and unselfish zeal for his country he 



L. G. Ferris 

William Pitt, the Earl of Chatham, in the House of Lords 



WILLIAM PITT 65 

led England to become the foremost power of the 
world. 

At Walpole’s death Pitt took a leading position in 
British affairs. He was the only man that the people 
could trust and was called by them The Great 
Commoner.” 

The king, George II, stubbornly refused to grant 
Pitt the offices which he by right deserved. In spite 
of this opposition, however, he rose from one position 
to another until in 1757 he became prime minister of 
England. It was then that he plunged into the most 
splendid period of his career. He waged parliamentary 
conflicts, never swaying in his convictions. He either 
won his point or resigned his office, always to be re¬ 
called, because “ the play could not go on without its 
chief actor.” 

When Pitt took the helm, England was in the midst 
of the great struggle with the French for supremacy 
in India and America. These two rival powers had 
turned almost simultaneously to India, that untouched 
mine of wealth, and were striving with each other for 
its possession. At first the power of both was exercised 
largely through commercial organizations — the British 
East India Company and the French East India Com¬ 
pany. Gradually the jealousy that arose over their 
attempts to secure complete control of trade brought 
the nations themselves into conflict. Robert Clive, at 
first a clerk in the East India Company, entered the 
army raised by England and, fired with zeal and ambi- 


40 ° 





















































68 


BIOGRAPHY 


tion, this young daredevil repeatedly conquered the ; 
French and their native allies until English influence ^ 
in India was practically supreme. The hardships of . 
military life and of the climate broke down Clive’s ; 
health, and he was forced to return to England. j 

In 1756, however, when Clive, restored in health, | 
had returned to India as military commander at Ma¬ 
dras, fresh trouble broke out in the north of India. 

A cruel and dissipated nabob of Bengal revolted against 
English authority, seized Calcutta, and threw one hun¬ 
dred and forty-six Englishmen into the cell of the 
English fort. This cell, the Black Hole of Calcutta,” 
as it is called, was twenty feet square and had only a 
few windows near the low ceiling. The weather was 
intensely hot. Within this hideous hole one hundred 
forty-six men, suffocating for lack of air, struggled and 
fought to get near the windows. In the morning only 
twenty-three had survived the terrible experience. 
Clive, burning with indignation, commanded an expe¬ 
dition, put down the revolt, captured Calcutta, and 
forced the nabob to enter a new alliance with England. 

New trouble met Clive when the French and Indian j 
War in America brought France and England again 
into conflict in India. A great victory by Clive at i 
Plassey, against heavy odds, won for him the position 
of governor general of British possessions in Bengal. 

He was equally victorious against the French in the 
south of India, and by 1760 he had placed the future ' 
of India in the hands of the English. Although Wil- 


WILLIAM PITT 


69 

liam Pitt did not personally enter into this conquest of 
India, it is largely due to his wise choice of men and his 
ability to inspire them with zeal for the advancement 
of British power that England, during this period, 
reached such a height of military achievement and ex¬ 
tension of empire. 

While Clive was breaking the power of the French 
in India, Pitt was throwing into the management of 
the French and Indian War in America all the energy 
and enthusiasm of his nature. At first things had gone 
badly for the English, for the French had succeeded in 
winning the good will and assistance of the Indians. 
Pitt was wise enough to listen to the advice of the 
American colonists and follow the method of warfare 
they suggested. He encouraged the colonists to raise 
an army of twenty thousand men and persuaded Eng¬ 
land to furnish them with arms and supplies. To these 
colonial troops he added twenty thousand English regu¬ 
lars, and he placed them under enterprising and able 
commanders. Pitt again showed his good judgment 
of men by sending Wolfe into the critical situation at 
Quebec. In 1760, when Clive had completed the con¬ 
quest of India, Montreal was captured, and at the end 
of the war, in 1763, France had lost all her possessions 
in North America, except several small islands in the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence. 

In this period of great expansion England extended 
the rule of empire in still another direction. 

In 1768 the Royal Society of England sent out an 


70 


BIOGRAPHY 



Dance 

Captain James Cook 

expedition to make scientific studies. The navigator in 
charge was Captain James Cook. He sailed along the 
stretches of the shore of Australia, taking possession of 
it in the name of the English sovereign. He called 
the continent New South Wales because of its resem¬ 
blance to the shore line of Wales of the British Isles. 
It is interesting to note that England took possession 
of Australia just about six years before her thirteen 
American colonies declared their independence. The 




WILLIAM PITT 


71 

first colonists, mainly convicts, were sent to Australia 
the very year of the meeting of our constitutional con¬ 
vention. Since then England has given the people of 
Australia a very large degree of independence in their 
own government. At the present time the English gov¬ 
ernment is financing the movement of thousands of 
settlers from Great Britain to Australia as a means 
of relieving the mother country’s distressing burden of 
overpopulation. 

It was Pitt’s statesmanship and inspiring force that 
led England on from conquest to conquest. And it was 
England’s failure to heed Pitt’s wise counsel that lost 
for her, in this same period, her valuable American 
colonies. Pitt was from the beginning a firm friend 
of the Americans. He stood for the liberties among 
Englishmen that the colonists were asking for them¬ 
selves. His spirit in the matter is seen in his words 
from a speech in behalf of America: I rejoice that 
America has resisted.” 

When George III came to the throne, he was jealous 
of the power of prime ministers in England and de¬ 
termined as far as possible to rule without them. Pitt 
resigned a year later, and a Tory ministry came into 
power. When he returned to Parliament some years 
afterward it was as Earl of Chatham with a seat in the 
House of Lords. In the meantime England had put 
into effect her new determination to tax America and 
had passed the Stamp Act in 1765. One of the finest 
examples which we possess of Pitt’s oratory is his speech 


BIOGRAPHY 


72 

delivered in 1766 for the repeal of the American 
Stamp Act. A bill for the repeal of this act was soon 
afterward carried by a considerable majority of the 
House. In commemoration of this a colossal statue of 
Mr. Pitt was erected at Charleston, South Carolina. 

As American affairs came to a crisis, Lord Chatham’s 
health compelled him to be absent from Parliament 
much of the time. But America was not lacking in 
friends. A younger man, Edmund Burke, threw him¬ 
self into the American question, steadfastly holding to 
the policy of Pitt against the taxation of America. On 
the nineteenth of April, i77’4, Edmund Burke made 
his celebrated speech on American taxation. It was late 
in the evening when he began to speak. His talk was 
so sincere, so animated, and so forceful that “ the 
House was hushed save for that one magnificent voice.” 
When after a few hours he ceased, a mighty applause 
burst forth from the crowd. They could appreciate 
his brilliance, but they were king’s men and they were 
not influenced by his arguments. 

On the very eve of revolution itself, Burke made 
one last effort to save the colonies for England in his 
famous speech of March, 1775, on “ Conciliation with 
America.” Burke tried to show Parliament not that 
they had no right to tax America, but that the English 
nation was working against its own interests in doing 
so. The American colonies before 1760 had been pros¬ 
perous, happy, and a source of great wealth and power 
to England. He argued for a return to their former 


WILLIAM PITT 


73 

system of allowing the colonists the right to tax them¬ 
selves. But not all the sympathetic eloquence of Pitt, 
nor the perfect logic of Burke, could then save the situa¬ 
tion into which George III and England’s Tory ministry 
had plunged England. 

After a year of colonial revolution. Lord Chatham 
attended a session of Parliament to make a motion for 
peace with America. He came to the House wrapped 
in flannels and supported on crutches. In this speech 
occurred the memorable sentence, “ You talk of anni¬ 
hilating their Congress and of dispersing their armyy 
/ might as well talk of driving them before me with 
this crutch 

In the spring of 1778 Lord Chatham made his last 
speech. This old man, leaning heavily upon his crutch, 
made a pathetic picture.- Before the end of his speech 
his sentences became blurred j he swayed to and fro 
and then fell in a dead faint to the floor. He was 
carried to his home at Hayes, where he was tenderly 
watched over by his wife and children. In the days 
that followed, his life ebbed slowly, and on the eleventh 
of May this great English statesman reluctantly laid 
down his earthly burden. He had lived for England’s 
glory, and through his wise statesmanship and unselfish 
service he had increased that glory a hundredfold. 


TADEUSZ KOSCIUSZKO 
1746-1817 


In Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C., there 
stands a monument to one of the greatest patriots the 
world has ever known — Tadeusz Kosciuszko. In¬ 
scribed on this monument are the words, Freedom 
shrieked when Kosciuszko fell.” Perhaps when you 
have heard the story of this great man’s life, you may 
realize the meaning of these words. 

At the time of Kosciuszko’s birth, on February 12, 
1746, Poland’s progress was at a standstill. This coun¬ 
try, unprotected because of a lack of natural boundaries, 
was exhausted by the oppressions of other countries. 
Surrounded by three powerful nations of Europe, Aus¬ 
tria, Russia, and Prussia, who were working for her 
destruction, Poland was in a pitiful plight. 

Kosciuszko spent his boyhood in a remote spot in 
Lithuania. His home was a pretty but plain little cot¬ 
tage, where he was reared simply with the good ex¬ 
ample always before his eyes of the devoted married 
life of his parents. Kosciuszko mingled freely with 
the peasants and so developed a democratic spirit. 

Until he was twelve years of age, he was taught at 
home by his mother, a woman of strong character. 
Then, at the death of his father, Kosciuszko was sent 


74 


TADEUSZ KOSCIUSZKO 


75 

to a Jesuit College to continue his education. At this 
school he acquired a sound classical training and de¬ 
veloped a strong love for his country. 

A prince of the leading family in Poland, who often 
visited Lithuania, was attracted by the talented young 
boy. It was through this man’s influence that Kos- 
ciuszko was entered in a school under royal patronage. 
This was not a military academy, but the discipline was 
largely along military lines. 

Kosciuszko was an eager, enthusiastic boy, and pos¬ 
sessed unusual fire and ability. Whatever strength he 
had, however, was tempered by a peculiar sweetness, 
which won him the love and respect of his young com¬ 
rades. This characteristic prevailed in later life and 
drew men to his banners like magic. 

When Kosciuszko left this school, he was one of its 
head scholars and officers, and was recommended as a 
recipient of a state traveling scholarship. Supported by 
this money, the young man left Poland to pursue his 
studies abroad. He went to France, where he entered 
a military school j at the same time he took private 
lessons in architecture and drawing, for which he pos¬ 
sessed a strong liking. 

In 1772, while Kosciuszko was still abroad, the first 
partition of Poland took place. Helplessly he looked 
on while Poland’s greedy neighbors partook heartlessly 
of his beloved country. Kosciuszko’s soul was embit¬ 
tered, but he could do nothing. 

Two years later he returned to Poland, a well-edu- 


BIOGRAPHY 


76 

cated, strong young, man, burning with the fire of 
patriotism and determined to serve his country. He 
found himself bound to inaction, however, for the king 
was a tool of Catherine II and, through her, of Russia. 
Since there was nothing he could do, he retired to the 
country, where he lived at the homes of his relatives. 

While staying with one of his kinsmen, Josef Sos- 
nowski, Kosciuszko tutored the young members of the 
family to pay for his welcome. One of these was a 
beautiful young girl, Ludwika. As Kosciuszko in¬ 
structed her in her studies, he grew to love her. The 
girl returned his affection, and it seemed that the affair 
was destined to have a happy ending. However, over 
the gaming tables, Sosnowski made an agreement with 
his opponent that the latter’s son should marry Lud¬ 
wika. The girl was secretly removed from the scene, 
and Sosnowski refused to let Kosciuszko know of her 
whereabouts. 

Deeply wounded by this bitter affront, Kosciuszko 
left Poland and went to Paris. There he learned of 
the struggle for independence of the Thirteen Colo¬ 
nies. The word independence ” stirred Kosciuszko’s 
strong democratic tendencies, and it is quite natural that 
we next find him fighting for America’s cause. 

By this time Kosciuszko had become an engineer of 
some note, and he was placed in command of a num¬ 
ber of men engaged in fortifying West Point. This 
was the longest and most important of his undertakings 
in America. Little remains of the fortifications, but on 


TADEUSZ KOSCIUSZKO 


77 



Kosciuszko 


the site there has been erected a monument bearing the 
inscription, “ To the hero of two worlds.” 

From West Point Kosciuszko was transferred to the 
south, where he served under Nathaniel Greene. 
Whenever he was placed in command of men, Kos¬ 
ciuszko treated them not as inferiors but as comrades. 
In this way he won the love and respect of all with 
whom he fought. Kosciuszko proved himself invalu¬ 
able to the American forces because of his merits as an 
engineer. He often saved very difficult situations by 



BIOGRAPHY 


78 

his wisdom in the choice of sites for camps and 
fortifications. 

At the close of the war the rank of brigadier general 
was conferred upon Kosciuszko, and he was given a 
grant of land by Congress. Here he might have spent 
the rest of his life quietly on his own property, but his 
mind wandered again and again to the oppressed little 
country across the ocean. Finally he became so restless 
that he could no longer stand the inactivity 3 therefore, 
after winding up his affairs in America, he started for 
Europe in 1784. He reached Poland in the same year, 
bringing with him many new democratic ideas. 

The one tranquil period in Kosciuszko’s life was 
soon after his return to Poland. For four years he 
lived the quiet life of a country farmer. At the age of 
forty-five, this rugged soldier was again disappointed 
in love. From that time forth his one passion was that 
of devotion to his country. 

When the Polish constitution, declaring freedom 
and justice to all, was passed, it seemed that new life 
lay before the nation. Catherine II of Russia, how¬ 
ever, realizing that this would interfere with her plans, 
declared war on Poland. 

Throughout the spring of 1792 Kosciuszko was pre¬ 
paring his army for war with Russia. With their forces 
equal to only one single column of the Russian army, 
the Poles put up a gallant struggle, inflicting heavy 
losses upon a superior enemy, but gradually giving way 
before the overwhelming numbers of their foes. The 


TADEUSZ KOSCIUSZKO 


79 

frightened king of Poland ordered the Poles to lay 
down their arms. Kosciuszko, enraged, distressed, and 
grieved, fell illj and, immediately upon his recovery, 
he left Poland. The country was again divided, Russia 
and Prussia seizing each a large share. 

While Kosciuszko was traveling in other countries, 
hidden confederations were being formed all over 
Poland preparing to rise in the defense of national 
freedom. In conferences held in the dead of night, 
the choice fell upon Kosciuszko as the leader who 
should avenge the national dishonor. 

Two Polish delegates carried the proposal to him 
at Leipzig. This was the great moment of Kosciuszko’s 
life, and with fiery enthusiasm he refolded to the 
call. As anxious and eager as he must Iwe been, Kos¬ 
ciuszko formed his plans calmly and wirfi perfect com¬ 
posure. He issued urgent pleas to the people, and his 
remarkable personality and that peculiar sweetness ” 
of his nature drew the people to him as a magnet. 
Enthusiastically the peasants, landowners, rich, and 
poor gathered round their great leader, taking as their 
watchword, “ Death or Victory.” 

This watchword proved a stern reality. In a terrible 
battle the little Polish army was completely surrounded 
by Russians. In the bayonet charge which followed, 
the Poles were mowed down like corn before scythes. 
The Russians remained masters of that battlefield only 
by treading over the dead bodies of the Poles. 

Kosciuszko himself was seriously wounded in a hand- 


8 o 


BIOGRAPHY 


to-hand encounter, and was taken prisoner by three 
Russian ensigns. He was carried to St. Petersburg and 
placed in solitary confinement in the Peter-Paul for¬ 
tress. Kosciuszko’s wounds were treated by the unskill¬ 
ful Russian surgeons, and when they did not heal, one 
of the doctors reported the matter to Catherine II. 

His mind is sick with grief for his country and his 
body, is shattered by the wounds,’’ said the surgeon. 

He can live but a short time in prison.” 

By this time Catherine had recognized Kosciuszko’s 
high qualities, and she had him removed to one of her 
palaces, a place more suited to his condition. Two 
years later Catherine II died and her son Paul, who had 
always admired Kosciuszko, gave him his freedom. In 
order to gain liberty for his fellow prisoners, Kosciuszko 
was forced to swear allegiance to Paul I of Russia. 

He now decided to visit America and upon his 
arrival in New York he was received as an honored 
guest. 

“ I love America,” said Kosciuszko, “ and I look 
upon her as my second country.” 

He stayed only a short time, however, for within 
a few months he received urgent letters from Europe 
necessitating his return. The young Poles, former 
soldiers of the Republic, had enrolled in the armies of 
Napoleon in the hope of regaining their freedom. 
They little dreamed that he was using them only for 
his own ends. Kosciuszko, however, saw through 
Napoleon’s plans. ^ 


TADEUSZ KOSCIUSZKO 


Wishing to aid Poland as much as possible, he with¬ 
drew his oath to Paul I of Russia. This greatly en¬ 
raged the latter, who held a conference to decide 
“ what should be done to impede the criminal inten¬ 
tions of the chief instigator of the revolution in Po¬ 
land.’’ Russia then decreed Kosciuszko’s instant arrest 
should he be seen within her boundaries. Prussia and 
Austria followed suit, thus barring his return to his 
own country. Kosciuszko loved his country more than 
anything in lifej and yet he never again saw his own 
land. 

One small ray of hope came to him during his retire¬ 
ment in France, when Alexander of Austria showed 
intentions of aiding Poland. Then, as a bolt of thunder 
from a clear sky, Russia, Prussia, and Austria agreed 
to a renewed division of Poland between them. This 
was the final blow to Kosciuszko, and the tired old man, 
broken in health, retired permanently from public life. 
He took up his abode among some of his friends in 
Switzerland where he stayed until his death on the 
fifteenth of October, 1817. 

The body of Kosciuszko rests in Poland’s former 
capital, Cracow, where lie Poland’s kings and her most 
honored dead. To this day the name of Tadeusz Kos¬ 
ciuszko lives in the hearts of the Polish people, as the 
object of their passionate love and the symbol of their 
dearest national hopes — now realized. 


ARKWRIGHT and WATT 


1732-1792 1736-1819 

All through the Middle Ages people of western 
Europe made few inventions. For centuries they, con¬ 
tinued to do things exactly as their fathers had done 
them. Methods of travel and manufacture were very 
much the same as they had been in Greek and Roman 
times. This was due partly to the belief that such men 
as Aristotle had known about everything that could be 
known. People thought it a waste of time to seek new 
ideas or to attempt new ways of doing things. Besides, 
the best minds of the period were to be found in the 
cloisters where all questions were settled, not by ob¬ 
servation and investigation, but by the authority of the 
Church. Any one whose ideas differed from the ac¬ 
cepted religious beliefs of the time was condemned as 
a heretic. When Roger Bacon, a great pioneer scientist, 
about 1250, attempted to experiment in physics and 
chemistry, he was accused of magic, and when, in his 
writings, he suggested that some day people would fly 
in the air like birds, he was thought to be in league 
with the devil; his books were destroyed, and he was 
thrown into prison. There was very little encourage¬ 
ment, therefore, for any one searching for new ideas. 
It is a fact that a person eighty years of age, living in 


arkVright and watt 83 

this country to-day, has seen more changes in life than 
took place during the preceding two thousand years. 

Shortly before 1500, however, a new spirit of in¬ 
vestigation and discovery arose among the people. The 
middle of the fifteenth century saw the wonderful 
invention of the printing press. In 1492 the zeal for 
exploring new lands led to the great discovery of Amer¬ 
ica. At about the same time, Copernicus, a Polish 
astronomer, claimed that the earth was not the center 
of the universe, but instead revolved about the sun. 
This was considered contrary to the Scriptures, and he 
escaped persecution by concealing his discoveries. 
These were not revealed until after his death. Sixty 
years later Galileo, who invented the telescope, was 
imprisoned for defending the theory of Copernicus. 
But in spite of all obstacles, scientists persisted in their 
studies. How Newton, still later, discovered the law 
of gravitation has already been told. 

It was a long time, however, before these scientific 
discoveries affected the daily life of the people. Dur¬ 
ing the Middle Ages life was slow moving, and to us it 
would seem very monotonous. The hurry and scurry 
of modern times were unknown. Agriculture was the 
chief occupation. There were few large cities and only 
the crudest means of transportation. Manufacturing 
Was all done slowly by hand and, therefore, expen¬ 
sively. It was carried on in peoples’ homes not only in 
cities but also in the many small towns scattered 
throughout the country. Even the peasant farmer used 


84 BIOGRAPHY 

his spare time, particularly during the winter months, 
in making shoes, clothing, and household articles 
needed by his family. Thousands of homes were busy 
workshops. The father of the household was the mas¬ 
ter workman, often employing several boys as appren¬ 
tices. Each household manufactured one particular 
line of goods, such as shoes, watches, clocks, clothing, 
or chairs. The apprentices received little or no pay; 
they worked in order to learn a trade, hoping ultimately 
to become master workmen themselves. The articles 
thus manufactured were usually offered for sale at the 
homes where they were made. 

At the end of the eighteenth century, however, a 
striking difference in life occurred. Then suddenly, 
through the application of important scientific principles 
to industry, there began the transformation of that 
quiet, simple rural life, into the noisy, complex indus¬ 
trial world of to-day. 

One of the first industries to be affected was that of 
cloth making. For thousands of years threads of yarn 
had been spun from sheep’s wool by hand and then 
woven into cloth on hand looms. Cloth is made on a 
machine, the loom, by weaving together vertical threads 
with other horizontal threads. In the fourteenth cen¬ 
tury the first spinning wheel was invented which* took 
the place of spinning by hand. 

In the latter part of the eighteenth century there 
appeared five inventors — Kay (1733), Arkwright 
(1769), Hargreaves (1770), Crompton (1779), and 


ARKWRIGHT AND WATT 


85 

Cartwright (1785)—who made great improvements 
in both spinning and weaving. These inventions en¬ 
abled one man to spin or weave more cloth each day 
than dozens of men could have done a few years before. 

The most interesting in this group is Richard Ark¬ 
wright, for he was not only a great inventor but also 
an able business man. He is called “ the father of the 
factory system.” Little is known of Arkwright prior 
to his invention, though it is said that for a time he 
earned his living as a barber. His spinning machine 
manufactured a strong, heavy thread known as warp,” 
which was at that time much needed for weaving. The 
warp is the thread that extends lengthwise in the loom. 
This “ warp ” spinning machine was patented by Ark¬ 
wright, so that he controlled the sale of warp ” in 
England for many years. With the revenue he re¬ 
ceived he built his first factory at Cromford, England, 
in which he established dozens of machines and em¬ 
ployed hundreds of workmen. In 1786 he was 
knighted by King George III. 

Within a few years he had a number of new fac¬ 
tories all busily running. So great was the speed of 
his new spinning machines that the colored laborers, 
in the southern United States where most of the raw 
material came from, slowly cleaning a few pounds of 
cotton a day by hand, could not keep up with their 
hungry demand. By 1790 the supply of raw material 
was so low that Arkwright had to run his factories part 
time. Just at this crisis, the 'young American, Eli 


86 


BIOGRAPHY 



Wright 

Sir Richard Arkwright 

Whitney, invented a machine, the cotton gin, with 
which the laborers could clean hundreds of pounds of 
cotton a day. Soon our country was exporting one thou¬ 
sand times as much cotton as formerly, and Arkwright’s 
mills were once more humming. His cloth was sold in 
many countries, and before his death he became a very 
wealthy man. 

As the factories developed in various parts of Eng¬ 
land, another big problem arose. Most of the early 
factories were built on rivers so that the machines could 




ARKWRIGHT AND WATT 87 

be run by using the power of the water. However, 
there are not many, rapidly flowing rivers in England, 
and most of these were remote from trade centers. 
This problem was solved by James Watt. Watt did 
not invent the first steam engine. The fact that steam 
could produce motion had long been known, and crude 
engines had been used to pump water from mines for 
years. It was Watt, however, who made the steam 
engine practicable. He became a manufacturer of 
engines which were sold to factory owners to move the 
machines in their factories. 

James Watt was born January 19, 1736, in Greenock, 
Scotland. During his early life his father, who had 
been a small merchant, failed in business, so that the 
Watt family for some years was in very straitened cir¬ 
cumstances. As a small boy James Watt was unusually 
bright, and his parents were very proud of the progress 
he made. His father taught him writing and arith¬ 
metic, while his mother taught him to read. 

On one occasion when James was fourteen years old, 
his mother took him and his brother to Glasgow and 
left them there for several weeks to visit friends about 
their own age. Within a week Mrs. Watt received a 
letter from the mother of James’s friends in which she 
said: You must take your son James home. I can¬ 
not stand the state of excitement he keeps me in. I 
am worn out for want of sleep. Every evening be¬ 
fore ten o’clock, our usual hour for retiring, he con¬ 
trives to engage me in conversation, then begins some 


88 


BIOGRAPHY 


striking tale and, whether humorous or pathetic, the 
interest is so overpowering that all the family listen 
to him with breathless attention. Hour after hour 
strikes unheeded j in vain his brother John scolds, and 
pulls him by the arm to try to make him stop.” He 
used this vivid imagination that made him so inter¬ 
esting a story teller about everything that he saw. 

Some time later while he was spending an evening 
with his aunt, she suddenly cried out, “ James Watt, 
I never saw such an idle boyj take a book or employ 
yourself usefully! ” For half an hour he had not said 
a word but had stood before the stove, taking off the 
lid of the teakettle and putting it on again, holding first 
a cup and then a silver spoon over the steam, watching 
how it rose from the spout, and catching and collecting 
the drops of hot water it fell into. “ Aren’t you 
ashamed,” she went on, “ of spending your time in this 
way? ” Little did she understand that the boy before 
the teakettle was studying the power of heated water, 
and that this study would lead directly to the invention 
of an engine which ushered in the Age of Steam ” in 
the nineteenth century. 

When James was about nineteen years old he was 
apprenticed to a London master workman, named John 
Morgan, who made and repaired mathematical and 
astronomical instruments. At one time a small model 
of a steam-engine pump was given him to repair. 
While working on this engine which had been used 
for pumping water from a mine, he was led to make 


ARKWRIGHT AND WATT 


89 



Sir W. Beechey 

James Watt 

a thorough study of the power of steam, something that 
had interested him ever since the time he had been 
scolded by. his aunt. 

As he examined this pump and later watched its 
operations, he felt that it was not very successful be¬ 
cause it used or wasted too much steam and in return 
gave too little power. He devoted years of his life to 
the problem of perfecting what others had already 
begun until he finally produced a machine that did not 
waste steam and that exerted great power. The prin¬ 
ciples of the steam engine, worked out patiently by 
James Watt during long years of experimentation, are 



BIOGRAPHY 


90 

the same that are in use to-day in millions of engines 
operated in all parts of the world. 

His perfected steam engine patented, Watt’s prob¬ 
lem now was to establish a factory in which to manu¬ 
facture them, as the demand for engines to run the 
machines in the factories in England was pressing. 
Watt, by nature a thinker and a dreamer, cared nothing 
for business. He therefore entered a partnership with 
a man of affairs named Matthew Boulton. They estab¬ 
lished the “ Soho Steam Engine Works,” near Bir¬ 
mingham, and, through the business ability of Boulton, 
both men prospered and became very rich. 

Watt, however, gained no pleasure whatever from 
his great factory. Indeed, he was very much bored and 
discouraged because it took so much of his time. In 
writing about it he told of his detestation of making 
bargains or settling accounts, or forcing workmen to 
do their duty — so that I greatly doubt whether the 
silent mansions of the grave be not the happiest abode.” 

There is no question that this feeling was partly due 
to the violent opposition he met from the thousands 
of skilled workmen, manufacturing in their own homes, 
who saw that their means of livelihood were being taken 
away from them, because one of his engines could 
furnish power for as much work as a hundred of them 
could do by hand. For this reason, the master work¬ 
men, no longer able to compete successfully with the 
factory owner, were forced to sell their homes and seek 
employment in some great factory. The apprentices 


ARKWRIGHT AND WATT 


91 

of necessity, joined the exodus to the manufacturing 
centers. This great change in industry which occurred 
first in England is known as the Industrial Revolution. 
Within a few years a similar revolution took place on 
the continent and in our own country. 

As James Watt grew older he gave up his shares in 
the engine building industry to his sons because he 
wished to devote his abilities to things in which he 
was more interested. His highly imaginative mind 
produced many useful inventions, the most noteworthy 
being the application of steam to heating houses. Sir 
Walter Scott describes Watt, in his old age as he knew 
him, an alert, kind, benevolent old man, his talents 
and fancy overflowing on every subject, with his atten¬ 
tion alive to every one’s question, his information at 
every one’s command.” 


GEORGE STEPHENSON 
1781-1848 


George Stephenson^ growing into young manhood 
under the changing conditions of the great industrial 
revolution, believed the greatest problem of his time 
was the problem of transportation. How could the raw 
material needed by the factories be more easily and 
quickly transported to the factories? How could the 
manufactured goods made in the factories be more 
readily carried to the markets? The canals, the horse 
cart, and the pack horse were insufficient to meet the 
demand, and they were now considered too slow as a 
means of transportation. 

Robert Fulton had already solved the problem of 
water transportation. It was George Stephenson who 
solved the great question of transportation by land. 

George Stephenson was born in the year 1781 in 
Wylam, a village of less than a dozen small homes, in 
the extreme northern part of England, about eight 
miles from the town of Newcastle. 

His family was extremely poor and for a time lived 
in a single room of one of the humble dwellings in 
Wylam. His father, Robert Stephenson, was em¬ 
ployed as a fireman of a colliery engine at Wylam. 
This was a stationary engine at the opening of a coal 


92 


GEORGE STEPHENSON 


93 

mine and was used largely for the purpose of pumping 
the water out of the mine. Although the Stephensons 
were poor, they had a happy home life. George in 
later years often spoke of the family picnics enjoyed 
on pleasant Sundays. 

On one occasion when George and his sister Eleanor 
drove to Newcastle, his sister wished to buy a new hat, 
but the hat that suited her fancy cost fifteen pence more 
than the amount of money the children possessed. In 
this difficulty George showed the resourcefulness that 
helped him at many times in later life. He found 
a comfortable place for Eleanor to sit in the market 
place at Newcastle, requested her to wait until his re¬ 
turn, and then started off with determination in his eye. 
Eleanor obediently waited. When he came back in the 
late evening he was jingling in his pocket the fifteen 
pence needed to buy the coveted hat. He had earned 
the money during the afternoon, he said, by holding 
the gentlemen’s horses.” The purchase made, the 
happy children drove back in the twilight over the 
eight miles of lonely road from Newcastle to Wylam. 

As there was no school in Wylam, the Stephenson 
boys went to work at an early age. James, an older 
brother, found employment as a “ picker ” at the col¬ 
liery, while George watched the cows owned by the 
villagers. He drove the cows to pasture in the morn¬ 
ing and watched them throughout the day so that they 
would not stray away. In the evening he brought them 
back to the village, receiving two pence for his day’s 


BIOGRAPHY 


94 

work. When George became older he joined his 
brother at the mines. As a “ picker ” his work was to 
take stone, such as slate, from the coal that had been 
mined. For this he was paid six pence a day. 

At the age of fourteen, he was made assistant to his 
father who was now the engineer of the colliery engine 
at Wylam. These were happy days for George, as he 
delighted in studying the mechanism of the engine and 
in making model engines of wood and clay. At this 
time much was being written about machinery, and 
especially about engines, but as he had never attended 
school he could not even read these articles. So keen 
was his desire to do so that he enrolled at once in the 
night school at Newcastle, where he attended classes 
three evenings each week. The “ master ” of the school 
said that the progress made by young Stephenson was 
remarkable, and he was soon reading everything con¬ 
cerning machinery that he could lay his hands upon. 

When Stephenson was twenty-six years old he read 
of Robert Fulton’s success in making an engine which 
could drive a boat ahead, even against the current of 
a river. From the moment he read of that achievement 
the purpose of his life came to be to devise a means 
whereby trains of cars could be drawn over rails by 
an engine. 

Rail transportation had begun in England about 
1800. The first rails were made of wood or stone5 
later ones were made of steel. The cars were drawn by 
horses and were at first used only for carrying freight. 


GEORGE STEPHENSON 


95 

Three years later, however, a horse-car line for both 
passengers and freight was opened in London. 

Not long after this Stephenson was made an engine 
wright at a coal pit at Killingworth. ’ He immediately 
began the construction of a “ traveling engine,” to be 
worked by steam, for a tramroad between the colliery 
and the port nine miles distant. Lord Ravensworth, 
one of the owners of the Killingworth colliery, who 
had become deeply interested in Stephenson’s attempt, 
supplied the money necessary for building the engine. 

On July 25, 1814, the great experiment was made, 
and “ Puffing Billy,” as the engine was known, slowly 
but triumphantly chugged along its nine miles of track 
drawing thirty tons of coal behind it. It made an aver¬ 
age speed of thirteen miles an hour, but its speed going 
up hill was only four miles an hour. Puffing Billy’s ” 
run on nine miles of track from Killingworth to the 
sea marks the beginning of our great railway systems 
of to-day. 

In 1825 Stephenson was made an engineer of the 
Stockton and Darlington Railway, the first to carry 
passengers and goods by steam locomotion. Later he 
directed the construction of the Liverpool and Man¬ 
chester Railway, opened in 1830. It was on this road 
that Stephenson’s engine The Rocket ” won a race 
in which four other engines were entered. 

George Stephenson in his early years had seen quiet 
agricultural England transformed into a busy manu¬ 
facturing country. He lived to see his invention of 


96 


BIOGRAPHY 



The Rocket — Built by George Stephenson in 1830. 

the locomotive engine do more than anything else to 
increase the population of new industrial centers to 
hundreds of thousands and to multiply the number of 
factories in these cities a thousandfold. The rail¬ 
road precipitated the rush and complexity of modern 
business. 

More than ten years passed after Stephenson’s first 
successful trip before a railroad for steam transporta¬ 
tion was begun in this country. John Quincy Adams, 
as President of the United States, turned the first 
spadeful of dirt in the construction of our first railroad, 
the Baltimore and Ohio. This road was built west¬ 
ward from Baltimore to Ellicott’s Mill, a distance of 
thirteen miles. The engine “ Tom Thumb ” made its 








GEORGE STEPHENSON 


97 

initial trip on this road in 1831, covering the thirteen 
miles in one hour. 

Within a year’s time after the successful trial of 
the Tom Thumb ” on the Baltimore and Ohio Rail¬ 
road, similar experiments were made on railroads in 
South Carolina and New York. In New York a prom¬ 
inent state official, after riding over the ten miles of 
track built westward from Albany, proposed the toast, 

“ The Buffalo Railroad — may we soon breakfast in 
Utica, dine in Rochester, and sup with our friends on 
Lake Erie.” Little did this man realize how soon his 
prophecy was to come true. 

The engines and cars used in the early days appear 
strange to us now. In several states the tracks were 
owned by the state governments, and right to use the 
tracks was granted to the public. The result was that 
both horse cars and locomotives were sometimes used 
on the same track. This naturally caused much con¬ 
fusion, as the locomotives moved faster than the horses, 
so that it was often necessary to remove the horse car 
from the track to permit the locomotive to go puff¬ 
ing by. 

Like many other inventions the locomotive found • 
much opposition from some conservative people. 
Farmers in certain sections argued that the sparks 
from the smokestacks of the engines would set fire to 
the forests and burn the grain as it ripened in the 
fields. They also said that the rumbling of the cars 
and the whistling of the engines would frighten the 





Pennsylvania Railroad Company’s Exhibit 











GEORGE STEPHENSON 


99 

cows so that they would refuse to give down their milk, 
and that the hens would be alarmed to such an extent 
that they would cease to lay eggs. 

About the time that the locomotive engine was in¬ 
vented, many of our brave pioneers were migrating 
westward across the Allegheny Mountains, taking up 
land in the region of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, 
and Tennessee. There were no tracks westward, how¬ 
ever. If one were to study a map showing the places 
of settlement in the Ohio Valley at that time, it would 
be seen that the pioneers always established their set¬ 
tlements on the banks of the Ohio River or on the 
banks of some of its tributaries. There were also a few 
settlements, even at this early time, on the Mississippi 
River. The rivers were the natural highways, in most 
cases the only means of communication with the out¬ 
side world, and the early settlers feared to move far 
inland from them. The products of their farms were 
shipped to market by the river highway, and in the 
same way they obtained the few things they bought. 
In those early days people regarded the prairie country 
of what is now Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska as 
little better than desert waste. 

The invention of the locomotive by George Stephen¬ 
son had an even more profound effect upon the life and 
the development of this country than upon his own 
country, England. The railroads that were constructed 
took the place of the rivers as a means of transportation. 
The pioneers could go almost anywhere, knowing that 


100 


BIOGRAPHY 



East and West United 

Driving the last spike, May lo, 1869, at Promontory Point, Utah, 
connecting the Union and Central Pacific Railroads. 

a railroad would follow. Railroads were even pro¬ 
jected in territory ahead of settlement, the promoters 
confident that settlements would soon be made along 
the routes even to their terminals. 

The first period of great railroad construction in this 
country was during Jackson’s administration from 1828 
to 1836. Prior to this canals had been dug as a means 
of transportation. Up to 1850 most of the track was 
laid to the east of the Appalachian Mountains. From 
1850 to i860 was the first great period of railroad 
building in the Mississippi Valley. Thousands of miles 
were laid east of the Mississippi as far north as the 
central part of Wisconsin and as far south as the Gulf 



GEORGE STEPHENSON 


lOI 


of Mexico. Several hundred miles of railroad were 
built west of the Mississippi River. By the year 1869, 
when the Union and Central Pacific railroads were com¬ 
pleted, one could travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
by rail. ' This was just twenty-one years after the death 
of George Stephenson. Other transcontinental rail¬ 
roads were soon built, and this country has now become 
a network of railroads. In fact we have enough rail¬ 
road track in the United States to encircle the Earth 
sixteen times. There are as many railroad employees 
in this country now as there were inhabitants in the 
original Thirteen Colonies. These employees are paid 
each year in wages two hundred times the amount we 
paid for the vast Louisiana Territory. In Africa the 
great railroad from Cairo to Cape Town is at present 
being constructed. It is over twice as long as our 
transcontinental roads. The Russian railroad from 
Petrograd to Vladivostok is also about five thousand 
miles long. 

George Stephenson, although greatly honored by his 
government in the later years of his life, remained a 
quiet, patient, and studious man, caring little for the 
fame and glory that he had achieved. When he died 
in 1848, at the age of sixty-eight, he probably realized 
the important part the locomotive engine was to play 
in the rapid settlement of the United States. We in 
this country owe much to George Stephenson. 


KARL MARX 


1818-1883 

Karl Marx was born of a well-to-do family in 
Prussia in i8i8. He was just one year old when 
James Watt died. He grew up, therefore, at the time 
when the old system of hand manufacturing was pass¬ 
ing away and small towns were growing into great 
industrial centers with thousands of factories filled with 
busy workmen. KarPs father was a scholarly man, and 
often discussed philosophy, religion, and history with 
his boy. It was through the influence of his father’s 
instruction that Karl developed a liking for the liberal 
writings of Voltaire. 

When he was only twenty years old his father died. 
Karl, who had been studying law, largely because his 
father wished him to, now felt free to give up that 
study which had never appealed to him and devote him¬ 
self to journalism in which he was keenly interested. 
Before long this fiery young apostle of Voltaire was 
editing a radical newspaper in which he attacked the 
•Prussian government for its interference with the free¬ 
dom of the individual. The autocratic Prussian gov¬ 
ernment banished young Marx, who then went to Paris. 

While here he became interested in the working¬ 
man. He visited many factory towns and everywhere 


102 


KARL MARX 


103 

he found misery. The sudden change in industrial con¬ 
ditions had brought great hardships to the people. 
There were many problems that needed to be solved, 
such as that of fair wages for workmen j sanitary con¬ 
ditions in factories j the number of hours of labor em¬ 
ployers could require j the employment of women and 
children; provision for those injured in the factory 
as well as for those who became too old to work. Real¬ 
izing that one reason for the sad plight of the laboring 
people was their ignorance, he established a school for 
them in which he gave them instruction at night. He 
was very farsighted in these early years, for even at 
that time he predicted labor unions and international 
alliances of workmen. 

Banished from France because of these radical ideas, 
Marx fled to England. Here he found even more ter¬ 
rible working conditions than he had seen in France. 
The workmen with their families lived near the fac¬ 
tories in squalid houses furnished by the factory owner. 
Women worked underground in mines, and there are 
instances where they were harnessed with mules to carts 
drawing heavy loads. Children of seven and even five 
years of age often worked twelve hours a day. There 
were no guards about machinery to protect life and 
limb. The injured and the aged were left to be cared 
for by their relatives whose wages were so small that 
they had barely enough for themselves. 

Karl Marx and other thinkers believed that this was 
all wrong, especially when they saw the factory owners. 


BIOGRAPHY 


104 

the capitalists, becoming immensely rich. They asked 
the question: What was the use of the French Revolu¬ 
tion which freed the common people from oppression 
by an aristocracy of birth if that aristocracy is to be 
immediately supplanted by another aristocracy of 
wealth? They believed that the factory owners had 
become immensely wealthy because they had kept for 
themselves too large a portion of the profits of the 
factory. They thought that poverty and suffering 
would not exist among the workers except for the greed 
of their employers. Marx’s solution of the problem 
was to have the means of production (in those days it 
meant factories) owned by the state so that all profits 
could be divided among those who actually performed 
the labor. This doctrine is called Socialism. 

Centuries before the time of Marx men had dreamed 
of ideal states where all could share equally. One of 
these dreamers was Sir Thomas More, an Englishman, 
who, in 1516, sick at heart as he viewed the oppression 
of the common people by the nobility, wrote a book 
called Utofia. In Utopia, “ Land of Nowhere,” there 
was neither great riches nor poverty. Land was equally 
divided among the inhabitants, and life was so arranged 
that no one worked more than six hours a day. The 
remaining time was spent in rest, recreation, and study. 

Another idealist was Robert Owen, a splendid man 
who tried to put his dreams of social equality into 
actual practice. He was one of the early socialists who 
believed that the injustices in industrial life could be 


KARL MARX 


105 

cured by reaching the heart of the capitalist. Owen 
himself had been a factory worker who, through his 
great ability, became a factory owner. Realizing the 
bad conditions in the factory towns and believing that 
the employees should own and run the factories, he 
thought his work in life was to set an example to other 
capitalists by giving to his employees the factories in 
which they worked. He also used his wealth in estab¬ 
lishing small communities in which the lands and fac¬ 
tories were to be owned by the community. One of the 
numerous towns that Robert Owen founded was New 
Harmony, Indiana. Like his many similar enterprises, 
it proved unsuccessful. Owen failed to understand 
that while he could give his factories and his wealth 
to his employees, he could not give them his initiative 
and his genius, which were the elements that had for¬ 
merly made his enterprises successful. As Owen’s 
plans were like those of the ideal Utopia,” his social¬ 
ism is known as Utopian Socialism. 

Karl Marx, on the other hand, is said to have been 
a careful student of economics, and the socialism he ad¬ 
vocated is known as Scientific Modern Socialism. 

During part of the time that he lived in England, 
Marx and his family were in dire poverty. This was 
somewhat relieved in 1852 when he became London 
correspondent of a leading New York paper. His the¬ 
ories as to socialism were then published and widely 
read in this country, so that Karl Marx was distinctly 
the teacher of socialism in America as well as in Europe. 



io6 


BIOGRAPHY 


During our Civil War the English factory owners, 
competing with our northern manufacturers for raw 
material and markets, tried to influence the English 
government to recognize the independence of the Con¬ 
federacy, so that they could get raw cotton from the 
South and sell their cotton goods there free of duty. 
Karl Marx, as a leader of the workingmen of England, 
made it clear to them that the North fought in behalf 
of the freedom of the working classes. Huge mass 
meetings of workmen were held by Marx to celebrate 
Lincoln’s Proclamation of Emancipation. 

While in London, through years of labor, Marx 
wrote a book. Das Kafitaly which is regarded as a text¬ 
book for scientific socialists. Socialists to-day, however, 
are of very different degrees in their demandsj the 
most conservative wish the government to buy from the 
present owners great resources like coal and iron mines 
and large industrial plants, while the most radical wish 
many, many things now in private hands to become 
public property. 

Most people believe that socialism would kill indi¬ 
vidual initiative, that few men would try to achieve 
great success in the business world if they knew that 
the profits of their enterprise would immediately be 
taken over by their government. They think that the 
right to private property is the greatest incentive to 
men to work and be thrifty. 


NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 


1769-1821 

The great Napoleon Bonaparte, whose name is for¬ 
ever linked with the glory of France, and who for 
fifteen years dominated all Europe, was not a French¬ 
man by birth but the son of a poor but titled Italian 
family whose home was on the island of Corsica. Just 
a few months before Napoleon was born, Corsica, which 
had been struggling to overthrow the power of Genoa, 
was sold to France. It was at Ajaccio, in Corsica, now 
a French possession, that Napoleon was born, August 
15, 1769. 

Napoleon grew up in a large family. Besides his 
elder brother, Joseph, he had six younger brothers and 
sisters, all of whom shared with him in his later tri¬ 
umphs and glories. Napoleon himself not only re¬ 
sembled his mother in appearance but inherited from 
her an energetic disposition and a strong will. As a 
child he was obstinate and difficult to control and paid 
much less attention to his studies than he did to the 
heroic stories he overheard of Paoli, the defeated 
Corsican leader who had fought for the independence 
of the island. 

When Napoleon was ten years old, his father sent 
him to a preparatory school in France to learn French 
107 


io8 


BIOGRAPHY 


in order that he might later enter the military school 
at Brienne. Although Napoleon was not a good French 
student and never learned to speak that language per¬ 
fectly, he did unusually well in the practical sciences, 
in history, and in mathematics — subjects which inter¬ 
ested him keenly. 

Life at Brienne was very different from his carefree 
existence under sunny Italian skies. Napoleon was 
sensitive to the taunts of his fellow classmates, who 
ridiculed his poverty and belittled his noble birth, and 
he grew daily more gloomy and silent. He used to 
sit at his books, alone and self-absorbed, not always 
studying the pages but often brooding over the insults 
received at the hands of these young French aristo¬ 
crats, and dreaming of the time when he might win 
revenge by freeing his native Corsica from France. 

Although he made few friends, his natural qualities 
as a leader were early recognized by the other students. 
On one occasion, after an unusually heavy snowfall, the 
boys, under Napoleon’s direction, built a huge snow 
fort. They then separated into attacking and defend¬ 
ing parties, and they furiously engaged in this mimic 
warfare until the authorities stopped it because the 
contestants mixed stones with the snow and many of 
them were injured. Napoleon commanded the attack. 
During the fight one of the boys on his side dared to 
disobey his orders. Napoleon immediately knocked 
him down with one of these weighted snowballs, which 
gave him a bad cut on the forehead. Many years later, 


NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 


109 

when Napoleon was emperor, a strange man managed 
to obtain an audience with him. Napoleon refused to 
grant what the man wanted. When, however, the 
stranger pushed back a lock of hair and showed the 
scar on his forehead, recalling to Napoleon that snow 
fight of long ago, the emperor, with his flashing smile, 
and quick, decisive manner, granted his former school¬ 
mate’s request. 

Napoleon went straight from military school into the 
French army, a haughty and ambitious youth, still a 
Corsican at heart. During his early years of service he 
made frequent visits to Corsica, each one strengthening 
his desire to win freedom for his native land. On 
his first visit home he found that his father had died, 
leaving his large family almost in want. On his last 
trip, in 1792, Paoli tried to persuade him to join with 
him in surrendering the island to the English. When 
Napoleon, disgusted at Paoli’s desertion, refused, Paoli 
committed the act of treason himself. Napoleon imme¬ 
diately collected several hundred men and attempted 
to expel the English. Overcome by the great odds 
against him, for most of the Corsicans sided with Paoli, 
Napoleon was forced to flee from Corsica with his 
entire family. 

Back again in France, hated by the Corsicans, and 
dismissed from the French army as a deserter, Napo¬ 
leon, desperately poor, struggled through one of the 
darkest periods of his life. As France needed officers 
at the time, he was again given a commission, and for 


no 


BIOGRAPHY 


a few months he had some successful military service. 
Then one day, believing that he had been insulted by 
some action of his superiors, the hot-headed young man 
took offense and handed in his resignation. He felt 
himself capable of great things j he saw no door open 
to him. At one time he thought seriously of commit¬ 
ting suicide. 

It is not to be wondered at that Madame Josephine 
Beauharnais, whom he met and fell in love with at this 
time, found nothing particularly attractive in this thin, 
sallow-faced soldier, too short to be impressive and 
too shabby to be taken seriously. It was hard for her 
to believe in Napoleon as intensely as he believed in 
himself. But Napoleon began to show his military 
skill on several occasions, notably when he saved the 
Convention by turning the artillery upon the mob, 
When it was rumored, moreover, that he might be 
made commander-in-chief of the army in Italy, she 
began to realize that the glow in his eyes, when he 
had talked of his future, might mean something, after 
all. She grew to believe in his genius, and, in spite 
of the scorn of her friends, promised to marry him. 
Two days before their marriage her confidence was 
justified, for Napoleon was put in full charge of the 
campaign of the French Republic against Italy. 

Just a few weeks before he had been without a posi¬ 
tion and with gloomy prospects j at one stride he sud¬ 
denly attained to one of the highest military positions 
in France. 


NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 


III 


“ Fortune is on my side,” he wrote in great enthu¬ 
siasm to his brother. From that time on he believed 
that Fate had great things in store for him, and that he 
was, indeed, the “ Man of Destiny ” for France. 

Napoleon quickly formed his plan of campaign 
against Italy and Austria. He cleverly separated his 
enemies, defeated the king of Sardinia, and then set 
out after the retreating Austrians. In a number of suc¬ 
cessful engagements the Austrian armies were quickly 
defeated, and Napoleon was soon marching toward 
Vienna. When he was almost within sight of the city, 
the Austrian court hastened to sign peace terms. 

In the treaty that was later made, Napoleon gave the 
first signs of what was to be his attitude throughout 
life toward the smaller countries of Europe. He 
changed the map of Europe with an absolute disregard 
for anything except the glory of France. He took the 
Netherlands from Austria and gave it to France. He 
seized one of the northern states of Italy and made it 
into a republic and established a brilliant court for him¬ 
self at Milan. Here, as General Bonaparte, he began 
to indulge his love of pomp and admiration and to 
reveal his underlying determination to make himself 
master of France. 

But, realizing that the time was not yet ripe and that 
he must win more victories to dazzle the French people, 
he made up his mind to attack France’s greatest enemy, 
England, by conquering Egypt and threatening British 
commerce in the Mediterranean. He had dreams also 


II2 


BIOGRAPHY 



Napoleon 


Paul Delaroche 


of breaking England’s power over India and adding 
that rich land to the dominions of France. 

This Egyptian campaign, however, was by no means 
wholly successful j for Nelson’s victory over the French 
fleet cut off the French troops in Egypt from Europe. 
While Napoleon was winning some victories in Egypt, 
the plague broke out among his men, and the army 
doctors refused to touch those who were suffering from 




NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 


113 

the disease. Napoleon, utterly regardless of his own 
safety, went among his sick men, cheering and com¬ 
forting them until the doctors, made bold by their 
chief’s example, went to work to care for the unfor¬ 
tunate victims. 

It was just about this time that Napoleon received a 
package of newspapers from France, which were full 
of the accounts of the new attacks which the European 
allies were planning against the French Republic, which 
was at that time in a sadly disorganized state. 

Believing this to be his opportunity, Napoleon hur¬ 
ried back to Paris and formed a conspiracy to over¬ 
throw the government. Backed by his soldiers, he 
rushed into the Assembly Hall and scattered the legis¬ 
lators sitting there. Surrounded by his supporters, he 
assumed charge of the government, and General Bona¬ 
parte became First Consul of the Republic. A new 
constitution was made, but Napoleon saw to it that 
practically all power was in his own hands. 

Having won control through his military successes, 
Napoleon felt it was necessary to continue the war in 
order to keep his hold on the government. Although 
he was now head of the Republic, he again took com¬ 
mand of the army against Austria. By the marvelous 
feat of crossing the Alps, he descended unexpectedly 
upon the Austrian army and defeated them overwhelm¬ 
ingly. This time, when the treaty of peace was made, 
Napoleon seized for France the whole of the left bank 
of the Rhine. 


BIOGRAPHY 


114 

After peace had been declared Napoleon set about 
to restore order and prosperity in France. He encour¬ 
aged the emigrant nobles to return because he was 
eager to surround himself with an elegant court. He 
restored old titles of nobility, abolished during the 
revolution, and he and Josephine reigned as king and 
queen in everything except name. 

One of his greatest services to the nation at this time 
was the organization of a new code of laws, making 
them clearer to understand and more uniform all over 
the different provinces of France. He extended this 
code to all his possessions in Europe and also in Lou¬ 
isiana, which he sold a few years later to the United 
States. To this day laws dating back to the Napoleonic 
code are still to be found upon the statute books of 
Louisiana. 

In 1802 the people, happy in the reestablishment of 
peace and safety voted Napoleon Consul for life. 
Even this did not satisfy the enormous ambition of 
Napoleon, and two years later he declared himself 
emperor of France and had himself crowned with 
great pomp and ceremony at the Cathedral of Notre 
Dame. 

The achievement of this power only stimulated more 
far-reaching ambition in the heart of Napoleon. He 
saw himself the supreme ruler of Europe, with all the 
nations under his control and their kings subject to his 
authority. “ There will be no rest in Europe,” he said, 
“ until it is under a single chief.” And Napoleon did 


NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 


115 

not doubt that Fate had singled him out to be this 
great overlord. 

With this purpose in mind, Napoleon determined to 
invade the British Isles. He massed his troops on the 
French coast, ready to cross the channel. In the midst 
of these preparations a young English sailor was 
brought before Napoleon. This sailor had escaped 
from a prison camp, had made his way to the coast, 
and had constructed there a raft on which he meant to 
sail out into the channel, hoping to be rescued by some 
English vessel. When Napoleon learned that the boy 
had been willing to undergo all these risks in order to 
see his mother, who was old and sick, he was deeply 
moved. He gave the sailor a purse of gold for his 
mother and had him conveyed in safety to one of the 
English vessels. 

For some reason the proposed invasion of England 
was never made, but Napoleon had succeeded in get¬ 
ting England thoroughly alarmed. 

Turning his attention again to the battlefield in Eu¬ 
rope, Napoleon demolished the Austrian armies at 
Austerlitz, broke the power of Prussia at Jena, won a 
great victory over Russia at Friedland, and marched in 
triumph into the Spanish capital. 

One reason for Napoleon’s sweeping successes was 
the love and enthusiasm of his soldiers for their vic¬ 
torious leader. He had a wonderful power of inspiring 
personal devotion. Once during the campaign against 
Austria Napoleon was slightly wounded in the leg. 



David Jacques 


Napoleon in His Coronation Robes 







NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 


117 

When the news spread, the soldiers, completely forget¬ 
ting the Austrians against whom they were fighting, 
crowded around their beloved emperor, and they would 
not leave until they were reassured that the injury was 
not serious. As soon as the wound had been dressed 
Napoleon mounted his horse and rode along the lines 
to satisfy the men that he was not dangerously hurt. 

These years, 1808 to 1812, marked the zenith of 
Napoleon’s power. At his command the Holy Roman 
Empire had been dissolved. He had made himself 
king of Italy, and Protector of the Confederation of 
the German states along the Rhine. His brother 
Joseph was ruling as king of Spain. His brother Louis 
was seated upon the throne of Holland. He had a new 
subject kingdom, Warsaw, made out of Polish terri¬ 
tory taken from Prussia. Westphalia, another kingdom 
created out of Prussian lands, was ruled over by his 
brother Jerome. His brother-in-law was king of 
Naples. In fact, all of Western Europe, except Eng¬ 
land, paid allegiance to Emperor Napoleon. 

As no children had been born to Napoleon and Jose¬ 
phine, Napoleon, determined to have an heir to his 
vast dominions, divorced Josephine, even though they 
loved each other, and married Marie Louise, daughter 
of the Austrian emperor and a grand niece of Marie 
Antoinette. The son born of this second marriage was 
called the king of Rome, and, although he was never 
to rule over France, the possession of an heir gratified 
Napoleon’s ambition. 



20 


Naples 

England gained from Spain 
Gibraltar 
Minorca 

England gained from France 

Nova Scotia 
Newfoundland 
Hudson Bay Region 

By 1812 most of Western Europe except The British Isles, Sweden and Portugal were controlled by Napoleon 

The Congress of Vienna 1815 (Followed Downfall of Napoleon) 

The Bourbons restored to power in France 

Savoy, Piedmont and Sardinia established as Kingdom of Sardinia 

Sicily and Naples combined into the Kingdom of "Two Sicilies" 

The Pope restored to Power in Papal States 

Holland restored to The House ot Orange 

Austria given Lombardy and Venetia because she lost Netherlands 

Many other changes. Italy being left a country of many small states 


0 ® 


10 “ 






























120 


BIOGRAPHY 


With the ideal of making Paris the center of Europe, 
Napoleon spent enormous sums in beautifying the city, 
building wonderful arches in the streets and splendid 
bridges across the Seine. He created a new nobility and 
tried to win the support of influential persons by giving 
them honors and huge incomes. Every day he grew 
more arrogant and despotic. The new system of edu¬ 
cation which he established had as its definite purpose 
the training of children to perfect obedience and loy¬ 
alty to his absolute power. As this power increased, his 
fear of losing it made him suspicious of the slighte’st hint 
of disloyalty, and he began persecuting and imprisoning 
those who dared to criticize anything he said or did. 

One of Napoleon’s despotic acts, aimed at his un¬ 
conquerable enemy, England, was the beginning of his 
downfall. This was his policy, of blockading England 
from all trade with France and her allies. When Eng¬ 
land decreed that neutral vessels could trade with 
France only if they first entered an English port and 
paid a tax of twenty-five per cent on their cargo, Napo¬ 
leon announced that any vessel submitting to these 
English terms would be captured. The neutral nations, 
among which was the United States, were thus caught 
between two fires. In the United States many of the 
vessels were owned by New Englanders. These now 
withdrew their money from the shipping industry and 
invested it in factories where they could manufacture 
the articles they had formerly imported from Europe. 
By the close of the War of 1812 the factories were 








122 


BIOGRAPHY 


firmly established, and New England became the manu¬ 
facturing center of the United States. 

This continental blockade was particularly displeas¬ 
ing to Russia, one of the few countries of Europe not 
completely under Napoleon^s control. Napoleon, now 
believing himself strong enough to conquer this great 
country, gathered together a huge army of four hun¬ 
dred thousand men and invaded Russia. The Russians, 
retreating before his attacks, destroying villages, 
bridges, and food supplies as they went, lured the 
French army farther and farther on into a barren waste 
land. Although Napoleon entered Moscow a victor, 
he found the city deserted and in flames. A heavy 
snowfall added to the discomfort of the troops, and 
the French army, greatly reduced in numbers, began 
its slow retreat. Suffering intensely from cold, lack 
of food, and the constant attacks of the Russian peasants 
along the route, Napoleon’s army reached Poland — 
only twenty thousand surviving of the original splendid 
army of four hundred thousand. 

When he returned to Paris, however, he concealed 
from the French the extent of the disaster, and, col¬ 
lecting a new army, he set out to crush the rising spirit 
of nationalism in Prussia. This time he met total 
defeat at Leipzig at the hands of the allied armies of 
Russia, Prussia, and Austria. This was the end of 
Napoleon’s domination of Germany and Holland. 
When Napoleon refused to agree to the peace terms 
which dictated that he was henceforth to be satisfied 


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124 


BIOGRAPHY 


with the control of France, the allies marched upon 
Paris, and in 1814 forced Napoleon to abdicate. 

The great conqueror of Europe was banished to the 
little island of Elba. Here he was permitted to retain 
the title of emperor and have sovereign authority over 
his miniature kingdom. 

Just a year later, when reports began to reach Napo¬ 
leon of the dissatisfaction of the French people with 
their new king, Louis XVIII, he left Elba with a few 
of his followers and landed in southern France. When 
the government heard of his return, troops were at 
once dispatched to capture him and prevent his reach¬ 
ing Paris. But when the soldiers saw Napoleon, their 
great war leader, all their love and enthusiasm for him 
revived, and instead of taking him prisoner they joined 
his followers and escorted him in triumph back to 
Paris. All along the route he was greeted with wel¬ 
coming shouts, and France again placed him at the head 
of the nation. 

The allies immediately joined forces to crush the 
enemy and destroyer of the world’s peace.” Napoleon, 
following his old tactics, determined to move against 
the enemy before they were prepared to meet him. 
At first he was successful in driving back the Prussians. 
But on June 18, 1815, the English, under the command 
of Wellington, checked his advance at Waterloo, and, 
reenforced by the Prussians, completely overwhelmed 
his army in one of the most famous battles of the 
world. 


NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 


125 

Napoleon’s downfall was complete. This time he 
was banished to the lonely and desolate British island 
of St. Helena. His farewell was deeply touching, for 
Napoleon, unscrupulous conqueror that he was, had 
great personal magnetism and a power of endearing 
himself to those who had fought with him. 

You see, my lord,” said one of his friends who was 
not allowed to go into banishment with him, “ those 
who stay behind are weeping.” 

On the gloomy island of St. Helena, with its walls 
of rock rising abruptly from the sea, Napoleon lived 
for six years, reading his favorite books, writing the 
story of his life, and gazing hopelessly across the sea 
where lay the scene of his former triumphs. 

He died May 5, 1821, and was buried at St. Helena. 
Twenty years later the French government brought 
Napoleon’s body to Paris, and interred it with great 
ceremony in a magnificent tomb under the gilded dome 
of a famous old church. On the pavement around the 
tomb are inscribed the names of his greatest victories, 
and to this spot come scores of visitors daily to muse 
upon the great Napoleon and his amazing career. 


HORATIO NELSON 
1758-1805 

Through the cold mists of a London fog looms a 
colossal column sharply outlined among the indistinct 
objects about it — Trafalgar! ” The name rings 
through the mind of the spectator at a glance. Even 
as England’s beautiful monument to the hero of Traf¬ 
algar and the Nile stands out from its surroundings, so 
Horatio Nelson himself ranks above all others in his 
naval genius. 

Horatio Nelson was born in the picturesque little 
town of Burham Thorpe, England, the son of a country 
minister. Of his early life little is known except the 
bare facts. Horatio’s mother died when he was only 
nine, leaving his poor father to struggle under the 
heavy burden of caring for eight children. Horatio 
himself was never strong, but he inherited his mother’s 
weak constitution. In spite of this, he proposed to his 
. uncle, who at the death of Horatio’s mother three years 
before had promised to care for one of the boys, that he 
be allowed to go with him to sea. His uncle was aston¬ 
ished at the proposition but agreed to take him along, 
making the cheerful comment that the first time they 
got into action a cannon ball might take off Horatio’s 
head and thus provide for him! One would think that 

126 


HORATIO NELSON 


127 

this might have dampened the spirits of a lad of twelve, 
but Horatio only, looked forward with impatience to 
the time when he should feel the rolling deck beneath 
his feet. 

On a chill and dreary spring morning the eagerly 
anticipated summons to set sail was received. Horatio’s 
father accompanied him to London, where he left him 
to find his own way to his uncle’s ship, the Rauonahle. 
Here a cold reception awaited him. No one seemed 
to know anything about him. At first he was not even 
permitted to go on board. Fortunately he met an offi¬ 
cer who knew the situation and took him on the ship. 
His uncle had not yet arrived, and Horatio spent his 
first day at sea pacing the deck alone, no one paying 
the slightest attention to him. 

This sea trip to the West Indies gave Horatio his first 
taste of navy life. It was a bitter one. Horatio was 
not strong, and the life was so rough and lonely that 
his boyhood dreams were rather rudely dispelled. It 
was not in him, however, to give up, and he hung on 
to sea life in spite of its hardships. Just how severe 
these could be he learned on the next voyage when they 
set out for the North Pole. The Racehorse^ caught in 
the ice floes of the polar regions, faced the prospect of 
wintering in the Arctic. The crew of the Racehorsey 
with terrible memories of a previous experience, made 
every effort to free the ice-bound ship. 

Horatio was put in command of one of the short 
expeditions to explore for a passage to open water. On 


128 


BIOGRAPHY 



Engraved by W. Read 


Nelson 


this trip he narrowly escaped death. Some officers in 
the boat shot and wounded a walrus. The enraged 
animal plunged into the water and immediately 
emerged with a horde of companions and charged the 
boat. A huge walrus succeeded in tearing an oar from 
one of the men, and it was with difficulty that they kept 
the beasts from upsetting the boat until reenforcements 



HORATIO NELSON 


129 

arrived. At the increase of their enemy, the herd of 
sea monsters abandoned the battle. After much hard 
work and great anxiety, the Racehorse got free from 
its icy grip, and the men returned safely to England 
without further adventure. 

Following this came many other voyages, each one 
exciting and dangerous enough to be made into a story. 
Nelson, still a very young man, saw the lands of East 
India and of Central America, and experienced danger 
and disease. Promotion followed these trials and 
hardships. On one occasion Nelson was presented to a 
brother of the king, who remarked that he never saw 
a captain in the navy so much like a boy. 

During the American Revolution King George sent 
Nelson to cruise in the waters of Canada and the West 
Indies. Once, while Nelson was discussing with the 
governor of some islands in the English West Indies 
the trouble with the American colonies. Nelson ex¬ 
plained to the older man exactly what he intended to 
do. The governor was slightly offended that this 
young captain should presume to dictate to him. Said 
he, “ An old general is not in the habit of taking advice 
from young gentlemen.’^ With that coolness and as¬ 
surance that never failed him. Nelson replied, “ Sir, I 
am as old as the prime minister of England and think 
myself as capable of commanding one of his Majesty’s 
ships as that minister (Pitt the Younger) is of gov¬ 
erning the state.” 

At the outbreak of the war of the European nations 


BIOGRAPHY 


130 

against the radical French revolutionary party, which 
had just executed Louis XVI, England ordered Nelson 
to the critical spot in the Mediterranean Sea, Corsica. 
Bastia, the point of attack, was taken by twelve hundred 
sailors against four thousand of the enemy. Nelson 
himself paid dearly for his victories, for during a 
later engagement he lost the sight of one of his eyes 
through what was considered at first a slight accident 
caused by a splintering shell. 

Nelson’s first great naval victory was won at Cape 
St. Vincent against the Spanish fleet, then on its way to 
join the French fleet at Brest. “ Westminster Abbey 
or Victory ” was the cry with which he cheered on his 
men while boarding one of the Spanish ships. For this 
great achievement his invaluable services to his country 
were at last recognized. Up to this time, though Nel¬ 
son had taken part in one hundred twenty engagements, 
he was almost unknown by the English nation. He 
now hoisted a rear admiral’s flag over his vessel and at¬ 
tached to his name “ Sir,” which had been conferred 
upon him. Fame whispered his name around the 
world, and Nelson, happy that his services were finally 
appreciated, took most joy in the honest pride of his 
old father who gloried in his son’s renown. 

In a later and unsuccessful attack on the Spanish 
possessions in the Canary Islands, when several small 
boats containing officers and men landed in pitch dark¬ 
ness, unseen, to take some fortifications, a cannon ball 
whizzed by just as Nelson stepped from the boat. 


HORATIO NELSON 


131 

wounding his right arm. As a result of this injury 
his arm had to be amputated. The operation was so 
badly performed that he was in pain night and day for 
several months before the wound was completely 
healed. 

By the time Nelson was in action again Napoleon had 
just set sail for Egypt. The English, with Nelson at 
their head, discovered Napoleon’s fleet in the harbor 
of Alexandria. There, under cover of darkness, a ter¬ 
rific struggle began. The French admiral was killed 
and Nelson, badly wounded, had a very narrow escape 
from death. The light of dawn revealed gaping, 
blackened hulks, but the English flag proudly waved 
above the Egyptian fort. The French fleet was com¬ 
pletely destroyed, and the French army, left behind 
in Egypt, saw with dismay all hope cut off and Napo¬ 
leon’s dream of Egyptian conquest completely shat¬ 
tered. 

When Nelson returned to Naples to recover from 
the wounds received in the battle of the Nile, the 
honors heaped upon him were countless. Lady Hamil¬ 
ton, the wife of an old friend in the service, undoubt¬ 
edly saved his life from the pitiless fever that followed 
his wounds. Inspired with admiration for the great 
English hero, she used her influence with the king 
of Naples and secured ships and supplies, needed for 
immediate action, which Nelson had tried again and 
again to get from England. Lady Hamilton became 
the toast and idol of the English fleet. 


132 


BIOGRAPHY 



The Battle of Trafalgar 


The scene of the war was suddenly shifted to Naples. 
The French as usual were the aggressors, and treachery 
gave the kingdom up to them under Nelson’s very 
eyes. His already deadly hatred of the French was 
made more bitter. A heroic struggle followed between 
Nelson and the forces of Napoleon, and by a supreme 
effort Naples was saved from the grasping hand of the 
“ little corporal.” 

But Nelson’s stay in the Mediterranean was not pro¬ 
longed, for trouble arose with the Danes in the north, 
who had decided to stand for France. Denmark, 
Sweden, Russia, and France, frightened by Nelson’s 
continued victories, combined in a determined effort to 
wrest the sovereignty of the sea from Britain. Copen¬ 
hagen was the point where the enemies clashed. Dur¬ 
ing the terrible conflict which ensued and after three 
long hours of fighting. Sir Hyde Parker, commander 
of the English fleet, hoisted the signal to leave off 




HORATIO NELSON 


133 

action. When Nelson’s attention was called to it, he 
cried out: “Leave off action? You know, Foley, I 
have only one eye! I have a right to be blind some¬ 
times.” Putting the glasses to his blind eye, he re¬ 
marked with some bitterness, “ I really do not see 
the signal.” The gallant English, led by the fearless 
Nelson, destroyed nearly every Danish ship after two 
more hours of hard fighting. 

But there was to be little rest for England’s watchdog 
of the seas while Napoleon was cherishing his dreams of 
world domination. Nelson, now commander-in-chief 
of the British navy, was sent to cruise about Toulon 
in order to blockade the French fleet. Suddenly the 
French fleet disappeared. Nelson combed the Mediter¬ 
ranean and the Atlantic, going all the way to the Indies 
and back in search of the enemy. At last one morning 
they discovered the elusive fleet some ten miles ahead 
in the Atlantic, a short distance from the Strait of Gi¬ 
braltar. The Victoryy leading the British ships, soon 
forced the enemy into battle. Nelson, standing on the 
bridge in full uniform, wearing all his decorations of 
honor, directed the ships into action. Both sides real¬ 
ized that a fight to the finish was necessary. Coolly the 
English vessels, greatly outnumbered by the French, 
ran under heavy fire directly alongside the enemy. To 
break the French line, it was necessary to board their 
ships. Naturally the admiral’s ship was of first im¬ 
portance, and the admiral himself the chief target. A 
target indeed was Nelson, his orders revealing plainly 


134 


BIOGRAPHY 



J. L. G. Ferris 

Death of Lord Nelson 

his rank. Twice he ordered firing to cease, thinking 
the French to have struck. The second time, as the 
smoke cleared a little, a sharpshooter in one of the 
French ships sent Nelson’s death bullet on its fatal way. 
In spite of the pain. Nelson quick-wittedly covered his 
face and his stars lest the crew recognize him being 
carried below and quit the battle for want of a leader. 
Nelson was only human, for, when asked how much 




HORATIO NELSON 


135 

pain he was suffering, he replied that it was so great 
that he wished he were dead. “ Yet,” he added in a 
low voice, one would like to live a little longer too.” 
Even as his sight began to fail the news of victory was 
brought to him. Trafalgar had been won! 

Thank God, I have done my duty,” were the last 
words he uttered. 

According to his wishes he was laid in old St. Paul 
instead of Westminster Abbey, but this does not dim 
the glory of the great career of the man who established 
the English supremacy on the seas. 


ARTHUR WELLESLEY 
The Duke of Wellington 

1769-1852 

Arthur Wellesley, who led one of the most bril¬ 
liant military careers in history, was born at Dublin 
Castle, Ireland, in the spring of 1769, just three 
months before the birth of the young Corsican Napo¬ 
leon, whose dream of world empire he was to shatter 
at Waterloo. 

Very little is known of Arthur’s early life. His 
father, the Earl of Mornington, loved music and com¬ 
posed it. Arthur’s mother, also of aristocratic family, 
had little fondness for her son — her feeling toward 
him being “not far from aversion.” For her other 
sons she seemed to have had more affection. There 
were three other boys in the family, each of whom 
made his mark in his day, but none achieved the world¬ 
wide fame of her ugly duckling, Arthur. The family 
name of the house, originally Wesley, was afterward 
changed to Wellesley. 

After early school days at Chelsea, Arthur went for 
a brief period to Eton. Although he was keenly in¬ 
terested in outdoor games, he did not shine as a stu¬ 
dent, and the most interesting fact that is recorded from 
his life there was that he fought and won a battle with 

136 




ARTHUR WELLESLEY 


137 

“ Bobus ” Smith. But it may well be true that in hold¬ 
ing his own on the playground at Eton, young Arthur 
was training for Waterloo. 

From Eton he was sent to one of the military schools 
for which France was famous. Here Arthur, who was 
not very strong physically, nor very attentive to his 
studies, spent much of his time rambling about the 
streets of the picturesque old French town and climb¬ 
ing along the cliffs beside the sea. Close at his heels 
was his little terrier, “ Vick,” who followed him every¬ 
where j and when they returned from long walks he 
curled up beside his young master on the sofa while he 
read. 

When Wellesley was eighteen years old he was made 
an ensign in the Seventy-third Foot. From the first 
he took his profession as a soldier seriously. A few 
days after he joined the Seventy-third as ensign, he 
ordered one of the privates to be weighed, first in his 
ordinary clothes and then in heavy marching order, so 
that he might know what was to be expected of a soldier 
on service. A military officer of high rank, to whom 
he later told this incident, observed that this was re¬ 
markable foresight in so young a man. 

“ Why,” replied the duke, “ I was not so young as 
not to know that since I had undertaken a profession, 
I had better try to understand it.” 

After only a few months’ service as ensign, he was 
made a lieutenant j he was 'captain some three years 
later. Just at this time, at the age of twenty-one, he 


BIOGRAPHY 


138 

was elected to a public office as a representative from 
Trim, a family seat. This position he held for four 
years. He had no natural gift for oratory, and all his 
life excelled in action rather than in words. 

He was at this time an awkward and shy young man 
when it came to mingling with other people. He did 
not make friends easily, and when he went to dances 
he usually spent most of the evening sitting alone, be¬ 
cause he was too bashful to ask any one to dance with 
him. At the close of a very brilliant ball, Wellesley, 
after a lonely evening, was beginning to wonder how 
he could get home. As yet, no one had offered to take 
him, and, being a poor young man, he had no carriage 
of his own. Luckily the musicians, in whom he had 
shown great interest, invited him to ride with them. 
Later, when Arthur Wellesley was known far and 
wide as “ the Duke,” a great lady laughingly said, 
“We would not leave you now to go home with the 
fiddlers.” 

In the meantime his military promotions continued. 
When he was not yet twenty-four years of age, he was 
promoted to the rank of major and one year later was 
made lieutenant colonel. From the time that he be¬ 
came major, all the unawakened, practical energy of 
his nature was aroused. “ I believe,” he said, “ that I 
owe most of my success to the attention I always paid 
to the inferior part of tactics as a regimental officer. 
There were very few men in the army who knew these 
details better than I didj it is the foundation of all 


ARTHUR WELLESLEY 


139 



Duke of Wellington 


military knowledge. When you are sure that you know 
the power of your tools and the way to handle them, 
you are able to give your mind altogether to the greater 
considerations which the presence of the enemy forces 
upon you.” 

Wellesley’s first opportunity at actual fighting came 
in July, 1794. Although he had risen high in mili¬ 
tary rank and knew how to administer and handle a 
regiment on the drill ground, he had never heard a shot 
fired in battle. When he was sent to join the army of 
the Duke of York, at Antwerp, fighting against the 




BIOGRAPHY 


140 

French, and had to command the scanty rear guard of 
a defeated army in a slow retreat through a long and 
bitter winter, he learned how much disaster teaches a 
soldier. As he himself put it long afterward, with a 
certain scorn in his voice: “ I learned more by seeing 
our own faults and the defects of our system in the 
campaign in Holland than anywhere else.’’ 

This unhappy experience in the Low Countries dis¬ 
gusted Wellington with a soldier’s career, and he was 
willing at the end of his campaign to give up all his 
opportunities for fame on the battle field for a public 
office in Dublin. 

But the call of the army was strong, and two years 
later we find him in India, where for eight years he 
had a training in the art of war on a grand scale. He 
had not been in India a month before he was organizing 
an army for a campaign, and he found himself meet¬ 
ing the same problems that Clive had earlier wrestled 
with. A powerful native ruler was combining with the 
French in the hope of driving the British from the 
south of India. The native troops more than tripled 
those of the English in number. Against such odds 
he battered down their stronghold and fixed for all 
time British government in southern India. 

Two years later he led an attack against the warlike 
Mahrattas, bands of horsemen who plundered and 
devastated British property in India. Although they 
outnumbered his men eight to one, he defeated them 
so decisively that he may be said to have successfully 


Wellington’s March from Quatre Bras to Waterloo 
















142 


BIOGRAPHY 


completed the work in India begun by Robert Clive. 

It was a seasoned and experienced general who next 
led his armies into the great struggle of the Penin¬ 
sula War against the forces of Napoleon, and yet he 
was still under forty years of age. Although he had a 
small force and was somewhat hindered in his work by 
older generals who at first took matters out of his con¬ 
trol, Wellington succeeded in driving the French troops 
out of Portugal. In the later campaign of 1812 
Wellington, by superior military skill, cut asunder the 
French forces near Salamanca, and won a decisive vic¬ 
tory. He brought to an end four years of oppression 
by the French and was hailed in Madrid as a hero and 
deliverer. In the next year when the French reenforce¬ 
ments poured into Spain, he united the Spanish and 
British troops under his command and drove the French 
over the Pyrenees. 

The climax of Wellington’s military career was his 
overwhelming defeat of Napoleon on June 18, 1815, 
in the great Battle of Waterloo. He dispelled Napo¬ 
leon’s dream of world conquest and gave peace to 
Europe for forty years. 

After this crowning achievement, the Duke of Wel¬ 
lington had almost as many years of life before him as 
he had behind him. The victor of Waterloo was 
forty-six years old. He lived to the ripe old age of 
eighty-three. 

When the military hero turned to politics, it is not 
surprising to find that he carried over into his public 


ARTHUR WELLESLEY 


143 

life some of the qualities most necessary in war — 
bravery and belief in himself and in the government 
which he had defended. He was naturally a conserva¬ 
tive. In 18285 when he was made prime minister, the 
country was in a turmoil over the question of extending 
the right to vote to thousands of its people. 

So strong was the sentiment against the Tory party 
which opposed reform that the king had great difficulty 
in finding any one brave enough, under the circum¬ 
stances, to head a Tory ministry. Wellington was cou¬ 
rageous enough to face unpopularity and to form an 
anti-reform ministry, but he could not find enough 
men equally brave to fill the other places in the Cabinet. 
He therefore reported to the king that he could not 
form a ministry, that he feared even the power of the 
troops would be unable to dissolve the mass meetings 
of the people, and advised him to give way. Welling¬ 
ton, who was a soldier rather than a thinker, did not 
believe in the reform bill, but like a good general he 
knew when to retreat in order to save the situation. 

He persuaded about one hundred of the peers to re¬ 
main at home when the measure came up, and this 
cleared the way for the passage of the great Reform 
Bill of 1832. The bill remedied some great and long¬ 
standing abuses. It reduced the number of representa¬ 
tives from small aristocratic boroughs and increased the 
number from the large manufacturing towns which had 
recently grown up all over England as the result of the 
Industrial Revolution. As a result, the control of par- 


BIOGRAPHY 


144 

liament was taken out of the hands of the small minor¬ 
ity of aristocrats which had dominated it so long and 
put into the hands of the middle classes of England. 

For a time there was peace, but the agitation that 
died down in 1832 broke out again five years later when 
those who desired still further reforms drew up the 
People’s Charter,” one of the chief points of which 
was that every man in the kingdom should have a vote. 
The Chartists grew in number and power, and in 1848 
there was a huge meeting of twenty-five thousand 
Chartists who proposed a violent attack upon the gov¬ 
ernment if it did not give way to their demands. A 
little later when the Chartists threatened that a force of 
half a million men would carry their petition for reform 
to parliament, the government was alarmed and put a 
large force of special constables under the command of 
the aged but still courageous Duke of Wellington. 

This was one of the last acts of the great soldier, 
then in his eightieth year. He succeeded in dispersing 
the mob, but he only delayed the reforms which later 
Gladstone, Victoria’s greatest prime minister, was to 
establish. 

Wellington died in 1852, at the age of eighty-three, 
and was buried beside England’s greatest naval hero. 
Nelson, in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Side by side these two 
will remain in the memories of man — the one who 
gave England supremacy on the sea, the other who 
brought victory on land when the fate of Europe was 
in the balance. 


PRINCE CLEMENS WENZEL NEPOMUK 
LOTHAR METTERNICH 

1773-1859 

On May 15, 1773, a golden-haired, blue-eyed boy 
first saw the light of day in a splendid palace in Cob¬ 
lenz. He was born an aristocrat, and he was bred an 
aristocrat, until it was said of him in later years that 
he considered himself more aristocratic than the Aus¬ 
trian emperor himself. 

His early education was in the hands of tutors who 
saw to it that the young prince became thoroughly 
imbued with the ideals of the aristocratic House of the 
Hapsburgs. To conclude his education and prepare 
himself for his chosen field of diplomacy, he entered 
the Strassburg University. Here it must be admitted 
his preparation was mostly social. Metternich was no 
burner of midnight oil.’^ He loved a gay life and, 
for this reason, made no extraordinary record in 
scholarship. 

His handsome face and grace and charm of man¬ 
ner made him a great favorite among the fair sex. 
These same qualities combined with his quick wit, pol¬ 
ished speech, and tactful way of handling people 
marked him out as a natural diplomat. He had, too, 
14s 


BIOGRAPHY 


146 

a princely air of elegance that cast a glamor over 
people, and it is said that this was one of the reasons 
that Napoleon Bonaparte wanted the young prince to 
come to the court of Paris to represent Austria. 

Metternich’s business at the French court, however, 
was to check Napoleon’s ambitions, especially where 
they threatened Austria. He fitted well into the fes¬ 
tive French court and mingled love and politics in a 
way that won for him the title of Le Ministre Papil- 
lon ” (the Butterfly Minister). 

After Waterloo in 1815 Metternich returned to Aus¬ 
tria to become the real ruler there and to assume for 
many years a leadership in world affairs as conspicu¬ 
ous almost as that of Napoleon. 

Now that Napoleon had been checked, Metternich 
began his unceasing efforts to stem the growing tide of 
liberalism throughout Europe. Under his influence the 
great powers of England, Russia, Prussia, and Austria 
met to form an alliance to keep the peace of Europe. 
They planned very frankly to fight reform wherever it 
cropped up. 

Metternich’s own country, Austria, was a stronghold 
of aristocracy. The people had no part in the making 
of laws or taxes. Feudalism was still in force to a 
large extent, for serfs could not leave the land without 
the lords’ permission and were forced to give feudal 
service to them. Everything that might improve the 
state of the poor and thus lessen the power of the 
aristocracy was prohibited. 


METTERNICH 


147 

One reason for this oppression was the fact that 
Austria was made up of many different races — Ger¬ 
mans, Slavs, Poles, Magyars, Roumanians, Italians, 
etc. — and this prevented any strong feeling of patri¬ 
otism. Her rulers felt that the only way to maintain 
power, and prevent these groups from forming nations 
of their own, was to keep the people almost in ignorance 
and slavery. The slightest uprising would mean a 
general break-up of the whole empire. 

Prince Metternich was just the man to carry out this 
policy. He believed in divinely appointed kings and 
hated any signs among the people of interest in the 
new and rapidly spreading ideas of republicanism. For 
this reason he fought all clubs and organizations that 
encouraged discussion, and he throttled the freedom of 
the press. And this policy of repression he carried out 
not only in Austria, but in 1819 he persuaded Prussia 
to join with Austria in passing the Carlsbad decree for 
the whole German empire. This was a measure aimed 
to stifle all freedom of speech. Student societies where 
political matters were discussed were disbanded j pro¬ 
fessors were expelled for teaching radical ideas, and 
every newspaper, book, or pamphlet had to be censored 
by the government before it could be published. 

When Prussia, Russia, and Austria met again in 
1820, they decided, under Metternich’s guidance, that 
it was their duty to intervene in the affairs of any 
country where the power of the sovereign was threat¬ 
ened and to assist him in putting down the revolution. 


BIOGRAPHY 


148 

Their first action was to send an army to Naples 
to abolish the constitution, drive out the revolutionists, 
and strengthen the absolute position of the king of 
Naples. In the meantime there was a crisis in Spain, 
and they interfered again to maintain the power of 
the Spanish king against an uprising. Metternich even 
went so far as to threaten to use the power of these 
great aristocratic nations to crush the struggles for lib¬ 
erty of the South American colonies against Spain. 
This led to the famous Monroe Doctrine which de¬ 
clared against any European power interfering on 
American soil. 

In these efforts to maintain the old regime, Metter¬ 
nich spent much of his life in traveling. He had his 
spies everywhere, for he had become the head of a 
vast international police system for crushing revolution 
wherever it showed its head. At every court where 
he went he was always the clever, the brilliant, the 
charming man of society. In 1824 the death of his 
wife caused his return to Austria. When, shortly after 
her death, he wearied of solitary life and sought a new 
companion, there was no lack of candidates. To the 
surprise of all, his choice fell upon a brilliant young 
artist who was not of noble birth. Metternich easily 
got around this difficulty by having her created a 
countess. This real love match, perhaps his only one, 
was destined soon to be broken, for she died a little 
over a year later. 

The climax to Metternich’s success in turning back 


METTERNICH 


149 

the tide of liberalism and restoring absolutism came in 
the crowning of the autocrat Charles X, emperor of 
France. From this time on Metternich’s power de¬ 
clined. The long-gathering tide in France broke, and 
Charles was deposed in 1830. Metternich could hardly 
believe his ears. He was shocked. He saw the wall 
of absolutism that he had worked to build up crumbling 
away. He realized, too, that the fall of Charles X 
was stimulating liberals to new hopes and activities 
everywhere. 

Fearing a radical or liberal succession in France, 
Metternich held out as a threat the pathetic little figure 
of Napoleon’s son, whom Austria kept in a sort of 
gilded cage at Schonbrunn. 

When Metternich saw Russia deserting his ranks 
and helping Greece to wrest her independence from 
Turkey in 1832, while England, France, and Germany 
looked on in approval, he realized that he was fighting 
a losing battle. 

Metternich now married for a third time. The 
great personal attractiveness of the man is seen in the 
eagerness of the chosen lady to become his wife. The 
story is told that this young woman, Melanie Zichy, 
wanted to marry Metternich earlier and that he had 
married the young artist partly to avoid this union. 
Scorned by Metternich, Melanie at once became en¬ 
gaged to a baron of the court. When Metternich’s 
young wife died a year later, Melanie promptly broke 
off the engagement and this time succeeded in winning 


150 


BIOGRAPHY 



Metternich 

Metternich. They often had little quarrels, and Met¬ 
ternich in his polite but imperious way usually got the 
better of her. At one time, however, she outwitted the 
diplomat. He had insisted that she dance at a coming 
ball, but she for some reason did not wish to do so. 
She agreed j but when the night of the ball came, she 
wore a dress so very heavy that dancing was out of the 
question. 

While Metternich was leading his double life of 
play and politics, another eruption of the volcano of 
republicanism occurred. France in 1848 set up a sec¬ 
ond republic. Italy also, under the influence of Maz- 




METTERNICH 


151 

zini and the young Italians, was beginning to glow with 
the spirit of the times. Hungary, led on by Kossuth, 
was rising against Austria. 

The final blow fell at Vienna when students rushed 
in a mass to the hall where the diet was in session. 
Crowds gathered and encouraged them to invade the 
building. The mob increased and a general riot en¬ 
sued. Within the imperial palace a white-haired old 
man heard again and again, Down with Metternich! ” 
His rule was at an end. 

The relief was so great to the common people, whose 
foe he had ever been, that they were unable to take 
quietly the report of his resignation. They set fire to 
his palace and would have made an end of him if he 
had not wisely slipped into the rear door of a friend’s 
house. 

The fall of Metternich was the most astounding 
news since Waterloo.” 

Metternich and his family left Austria secretly in a 
strange manner. Their coach was placed on a truck at 
the rear of a train and the blinds drawn to give it the 
appearance of being unoccupied. Passing as English, 
they made their way first to Holland and then to Eng¬ 
land. Here Metternich was heartily welcomed by his 
old friend, the Duke of Wellington, and he used to 
meet and talk with that other exile, Louis Philippe, 
deposed king of France. 

Once in this busy country, Metternich was able to 
finish his life in more or less quiet. He was soon 


BIOGRAPHY 


152 

forgotten. His health began to fail as he bitterly 
watched the ever-increasing sweep of republicanism 
and the complete destruction of his ideals. He died 
on June ii, 1859. Although his death was almost 
unnoticed in his own country, many illustrious mourners 
attended his funeral, which was accompanied by the 
splendor to which he had been accustomed. 

For over threescore years he has lain undisturbed in 
his family vault at Plasse, Bohemia. In the meantime 
the cry Liberty or Death! ” has led the world on¬ 
ward until many a royal despot has been forced to 
leave his throne. If Prince Metternich could have 
heard the tramp of the American troops, the symbol 
of the triumph of the people over autocracy as they 
marched into Coblenz, the city of his birth, he would 
have turned over in his grave. 


LOUIS KOSSUTH 
1802-1894 


Louis Kossuth was born in 1802 in the ancient 
kingdom of Hungary, then ruled by the Austrian 
Hapsburg emperor. He came of a family of poor 
nobles, one with apparently more of nobility about it 
than the empty word, for seventeen of that name had 
been executed for too much love of liberty. He was 
trained as a lawyer, and at thirty entered the govern¬ 
ing body of Hungary, the diet, a zealous patriot, eager 
to free his people from oppression. 

His position here was such that he had a voice but 
not a vote. His first exploit was boldly to publish the 
proceedings of the diet. This was not pleasant for the 
proud, tyrannical nobles who controlled the govern¬ 
ment. They speedily discovered a law against print¬ 
ing and publishing ” such proceedings, whereupon 
Kossuth lithographed his reports. When this also was 
forbidden, he hired secretaries and had them written 
out by hand. There was no law against this, but Aus¬ 
tria controlled the post offices, and he had to circulate 
the reports through local authorities. At first he 
merely recorded what occurred, but presently he added 
pointed comments of his own. It is no crime in 
America to edit a newspaper containing articles criti- 


154 


BIOGRAPHY 


cizing officials, but an autocracy where the supreme 
power was Metternich would permit no criticism. He 
was thrown into prison in 1837 and tried a year or 
more later. It was due only to certain murmurings in 
Hungary that he was tried at all. 

There was no doubt that Louis Kossuth was inno¬ 
cent of treason j but although he defended himself 
ably, he was found guilty. He was sentenced to four 
years in prison — which sounds like as light a pun¬ 
ishment as one could expect j but four years in a Hun¬ 
garian prison of that date was likely to be a life sen¬ 
tence. At first he was not allowed to read or write. 
Later the authorities relented and said he might read 
any books having no political bearing. The literature 
he chose was not so politically useless as they may 
have thought. He asked for an English grammar, 
an English dictionary, and a volume of Shakespeare. 

Louis Kossuth’s method of learning a language was 
typical of him, though hardly to be recommended un¬ 
less one has four vacant years ahead and all of Kos¬ 
suth’s persistence. He read the volume of Shakes¬ 
peare with aid of the grammar and the dictionary, 
trying to understand every word and phrase perfectly. 
He said it took him a fortnight to finish the first page. 
But he achieved a command of English that some, 
who are native Americans, might envy. 

In 1840 Austria, having called for troops and had 
them refused her, found it necessary to make some 
concessions to Hungary. Certain political prisoners 


LOUIS KOSSUTH 


155 

were released, Kossuth among them. Austria may 
have hoped that after three years in prison he would 
not be able to recover his health. But he didj and 
shortly after his marriage in 1841 went back to his 
old work, editing a newspaper and making speeches in 
which he demanded Hungarian rights with passionate, 
fiery eloquence. His opponents knew enough not to 
imprison him again, and they started a rival paper. 
But even if they had had such a writer as Kossuth, he 
could not have made Hungarian wrongs seem right. 

In 1848 Europe was aroused by the news that 
France had cast off the rule of Louis Philippe, and 
established the’ Second Republic. Kossuth seized the 
moment for an “ Address to the Throne,” with which 
the throne itself sympathized quite as much as the 
emperor who sat on it. But the students in Vienna rose 
up and Metternich fell. 

Two days afterward the Hungarian diet, aroused by 
the fiery zeal of Kossuth, dispatched a delegation to 
the Austrian emperor demanding ministers under con¬ 
trol of the people, freedom of the press, and trial by 
jury. Then, led on by the energetic Kossuth, they 
transformed Hungary from a semi-feudal to a modern 
state, sweeping away old offices by which the emperor 
had ruled them, establishing a representative govern¬ 
ment and emancipating the peasants from the tyran¬ 
nical feudal lords. The weak Ferdinand I of Austria, 
with half his kingdom in revolt against him, took an 
oath to uphold the new Hungarian government. 


156 


BIOGRAPHY 



But the powers of reaction in Austria were too 
strong to permit the permanent triumph of liberalism. 

A second Metternich, the reactionary Schwartzen- 
burg, took command of the Austrian government, and 
Ferdinand abdicated in favor of his young and illib¬ 
eral nephew, Francis Joseph. He immediately abol¬ 
ished the new democratic government of Hungary, say¬ 
ing that he did not have to keep the promises of his 
predecessor. 


LOUIS KOSSUTH 


157 

Infuriated by such treachery, Hungary renounced 
all allegiance to the Austrian emperor and declared 
itself an independent nation. A strong leader was 
needed to take charge of the new government. Who 
could fill the position but Louis Kossuth? 

At once Francis Joseph sent troops to stamp out 
the revolt. Kossuth was not himself a military leader, 
but he made the war that followed a brilliant cam¬ 
paign. At his eloquence an army arose as though he 
had planted the dragon’s teeth of the ancient legend. 
Some great men have surrounded themselves with in¬ 
feriors, tolerating no rivals. Kossuth was never afraid 
to use all the brilliant generals and able ministers he 
could find. At one time England and America were 
almost ready to recognize his government, and Austria 
had to call for the aid of another autocracy, Russia. 
How could one country, fighting for freedom, hold 
her own against two of the great powers of Europe? 

Kossuth’s armies were overwhelmed, and the king¬ 
dom of Hungary once more bowed in submission to 
the House of Hapsburg. Hundreds of the rebels were 
now shot or hanged; many were driven into exile. 
Kossuth and his followers fled into Turkey. It is 
stated that at this time he was offered the funds of the 
treasury of Hungary to keep them from enriching the 
enemy. He refused. 

The Sultan received the fugitives generously. Rus¬ 
sia and Austria demanded them back. The Turks sug¬ 
gested that the Hungarians turn Mohammedans to save 


BIOGRAPHY 


158 

themselves. It is needless to say what was Kossuth’s 
reply to that. Other countries seemed likely to take 
a hand. Webster, speaking for America, threatened 
Russia if Kossuth were executed. He was kept in Asia 
Minor, but as a nominal prisoner. His children had 
been imprisoned j his wife had wandered for months 
disguised as a peasant. They were sent to him in Asia 
Minor. 

Now at last the United States did take a hand. A 
warship was sent to bring the refugees to America. 
Austria hanged Kossuth in effigy the day he left, but 
was really glad to get rid of him. The former gov¬ 
ernor of Hungary, however, showed no intention of 
settling down like an ordinary immigrant. He found 
use for the language he had learned in prison. In 
both England and Ahierica he made brilliant speeches 
in behalf of Hungary. Clay and Webster welcomed 
him to America 5 Whittier and Lowell wrote poems 
about himj he was received with popular sympathy. 
If he had been a South American, fighting for the 
liberation of some tribe in the Andes, he might have 
received the aid he wanted. But his country was in 
Central Europe, and any allegiance there would have 
meant a foreign entanglement. Besides, there was 
something inappropriate in America’s trying to reform 
Europe just then. Before he tried to declare his 
country independent, Kossuth had freed the serfs, but 
America had not yet freed her own slaves. So the 
“ Hungarian Whirlwind ” found popular applause a 


LOUIS KOSSUTH 


159 


different thing from governmental action. He trav¬ 
eled the country, speaking for open diplomacy — not 
yet arrived at — in praise of the common soldiers of 
his army, the unnamed demigods,” as he called them, 
and always for Hungary. He had glorious dreams of 
Europe freed and united — visions perhaps as far from 
us as from Kossuth. 

When it was clear that there was no hope, .he went 
to Italy to live. Italy had her own struggle for unity 
and freedom. In this Kossuth cooperated with her 
leaders, bringing Hungarians to Italy to fight for her 
cause. One reason for the defeat in which Austria 
lost Lombardy was the help given the Italians by the 
Hungarians. Austria meanwhile had gone back to her 
old policy of making Hungary submissive and miser¬ 
able. She succeeded quite well in the attempt. She 
kept only such of Kossuth’s reforms as she could con¬ 
trive to turn into hardships and proceeded to make all 
equal by equal oppression. 

When, in 1866, Francis Joseph, to gain the support 
of Hungary against Prussia, agreed to the compromise 
which partly restored Hungary’s historic rights as a 
nation on the establishment of the Dual Monarchy, 
Kossuth did not return. He had once spoken of 
Francis Joseph as that young Nero,” and while Nero 
reigned he would not come back to dance to his fid¬ 
dling. Hungary had declared herself independent — 
in his mind she was independent — but he believed in 
no compromise surrendering any of her Tights, and so, 


i6o 


BIOGRAPHY 


while one of his former followers led Hungary, Kos¬ 
suth lived a life of seclusion in Italy. He died in 
1894, mourned by his country, after more than forty 
years of exile and of failure. 

The results of Louis Kossuth’s work are hard to find. 
Some men die young, their souls go marching on, and 
their work is done. Here was a man who lived for 
forty years after his hopes should have been realized 
and died without seeing them fulfilled. But it was he 
who roused Hungary and gave her a taste of freedom, 
after which willing submission to Austria became im¬ 
possible. It was less than twenty-five years after his 
death that the Peace Conference of 1918 gave Hun¬ 
gary her coveted independence. 

Kossuth’s name belongs forever to the history of 
the struggle for constitutional liberty. 


SAN MARTIN and BOLIVAR 


1778-1850 1783-1830 

One man only stands out as the great military genius 
in the War for our Independence — George Washing¬ 
ton. South America had two George Washingtons — 
two military chieftains who won the independence of 
their country from Spanish tyranny, San Martin in the 
south and Bolivar in the north. 

, Jose de San Martin was born in a small Argentine 
town on the Uruguay River in February of the same 
winter that Washington and his soldiers were suffering 
at Valley Forge. It was but natural that Jose, whose 
father was a captain in the Spanish army, should be 
sent to Madrid as a boy to receive military training. 
Before he was twelve years old he was serving as a 
cadet in a Spanish regiment, and at the age of thirteen 
he was fighting in Africa against the Moors, the ancient 
enemies of Spain. He was in almost constant military 
service in Europe from that time on, and as Captain 
San Martin, fighting for Spain in her struggle to rid 
herself from the power of Napoleon, he was hon¬ 
ored and promoted to lieutenant colonel. 

During these years he learned to despise autocracy 
in any form, even that of Spain, and it gradually 
dawned upon him that good government would best 

i6i 


i 62 


BIOGRAPHY 



Arturo Michelena 

Miranda in Jail 

In the National Museum, Caracas, Venezuela 

come from self-government. It was this conviction 
that made him long to return to his own country in 
South America to help her in her struggle for freedom 
against Spanish tyranny. 

He was also strongly under the influence of Mi¬ 
randa, a South American who was organizing, all over 
Europe, secret societies to work for political independ¬ 
ence in South America. San Martin was early initiated 
into one of these societies and took a solemn oath to 
consecrate himself to the cause of liberty for the Span¬ 
ish colonists. 

Ever since Spain had first seized her vast regions in 
Mexico, Central America, and South America, she had 
looked upon them as lands to be used for the benefit of 






SAN MARTIN AND BOLIVAR 163 

the people who remained at home and not for the wel¬ 
fare of the bold pioneers who endured all the hard¬ 
ships connected with building up a civilization out of 
the wilderness. One of the Spaniards in these early 
days went so far as to write in his diary that the sole 
purpose for which the South Americans existed was to 
procure precious metals for Spaing and if the wild 
horses and cattle overrunning the country could have 
been trained to perform this service, the inhabitants 
could have been dispensed with and then Spain would 
have a perfect colonial system. 

Caring only for the wealth which she drew for her 
colonists, Spain ruled them most tyrannically, excluding 
them completely from the government and forbidding 
them to trade with any country except herself. While 
Spain was struggling against Napoleon, however, the 
colonists enjoyed a brief taste of freedom. They gov¬ 
erned themselves, and for the first time engaged in 
very prosperous trade with the markets of the world. 
By the time Spain was able again to give her attention to 
America and tried to resume her oppression, she found 
her colonists, from the Strait of Magellan to our 
southern border, prepared to free themselves forever 
from her tyranny. 

At this time San Martin returned to the country of 
his birth and offered her his services in her war for 
independence. By his military genius he soon won the 
freedom of Argentina and then, through his statesman¬ 
ship, transformed the colony into a republic. 


164 


BIOGRAPHY 



Jose de San Martin 

(Argentina) 


San Martin then assumed the task of fighting for 
the independence of Upper Peru, still in the control 
of Spanish officials. He decided, however, that it 
would be folly to proceed northward, leaving a Span¬ 
ish power in the south in Chili. Working with another 
enthusiast, O’Higgins, he pushed westward through 
Argentina to the great snow-clad peaks of the Andes, 
which rise as a mighty barrier between the wide plains 



SAN MARTIN AND BOLIVAR 



Statue of Simon Bolivar Presented 
TO America by Venezuela 

of Argentina and the valleys of Chili. 

“ What spoils my sleep is not the strength of the 
enemy,” said San Martin, but how to pass those 
immense mountains.” But he did cross them with 
four thousand men and heavy artillery, and in doing 
so performed a feat more amazing than the crossing 
of the Alps by either Hannibal or Napoleon. Mount¬ 
ing all his troops on mules, he led them hundreds of 
miles over barren regions and through dangerous 
mountain passes. The cold was intense and the air so 
rarefied at those dizzy heights that many, unable to 
breathe in it, dropped from the ranks. This passage 



i66 


BIOGRAPHY 


of the Andes has been called the turning point in the 
contest between Spain and her colonies. 

After conquering the Spanish armies in Chili and 
providing a government for the new state, with O’Hig¬ 
gins in charge, San Martin proceeded with his army 
northward, by boat, to free Peru from Spanish author¬ 
ity. For a time he was successful in all except Upper 
Peru. It was here that he met Bolivar, who had been 
earnestly working for South American freedom .in the 
north. 

San Martin greatly admired the military prowess 
and the statesmanship of his rival, but he knew well 
that Bolivar, who was very ambitious and vain, could 
work with no man his equal. . It was Bolivar’s ambi¬ 
tion to unite all of South America into a great repub¬ 
lic such as ours with himself as president. Believing 
Bolivar equal to this great task, and fearing that all 
that democracy had gained in South America would 
be lost should these two great leaders quarrel and turn 
their arms against each other, San Martin thought it 
best, for his beloved South America, to leave the field 
to Bolivar alone. 

For ten long years San Martin had fought for free¬ 
dom for its own sake. Other men had been selected 
governors of the republics he had established, al¬ 
though the honors might have been his. Now he 
made the greatest sacrifice of his personal interests for. 
that of his cause and, resigning from the army, he 
returned to Europe, where he lived for the rest of 


SAN MARTIN AND BOLIVAR 167 

his life, cherishing the hope of a great and free re¬ 
public of South America. 

The man in whose hands San Martin left the fate 
of South America, Simon Bolivar, now known as the 
Great Liberator,” was born in Venezuela in 1783, the 
year in which the treaty closing our revolution was 
ratified. Like San Martin, he went as a boy to Spain 
for his education. When he was a little older he trav¬ 
eled extensively in Europe. In France he witnessed 
some of the closing scenes of the French revolution, 
and on one occasion met Napoleon. 

Returning to Madrid, Simon, then a wealthy, idle, 
and rather unruly youth, fell in love with and married 
a young girl of fifteen. Together they came to his 
large estates in Venezuela, where she lived only a 
few months. Simon, just nineteen years old, and over¬ 
whelmed with sorrow, returned to Europe. While in 
Paris he again met his former idol, Napoleon, who 
was by this time emperor. 

Bolivar now despised Napoleon, who had converted 
the republic, for which the French people had fought, 
into an absolute monarchy. It was soon after this 
meeting that Bolivar decided that he would one day 
lead the people of his native land in South America 
in a fight against Spain for the purpose of establishing 
Venezuela as an independent republic. 

Returning to South America by way of the United 
States, Bolivar took advantage of an opportunity of 
observing the workings of a democracy. After two 


BIOGRAPHY 


years of fighting under Miranda, in Venezuela, Bolivar 
had the joy of seeing his own country declared a re¬ 
public. But his happiness was short-lived, for Mi¬ 
randa, though an ardent patriot and idealist, was not 
a powerful military leader, and after three years Spain 
had reconquered Venezuela and Bolivar was forced to 
leave for Jamaica. 

When he again returned to South America two years 
later, he went to Colombia, and placing himself at 
the head of the revolutionary forces succeeded in a 
short time in destroying all Spanish authority there. 
With the resources of that country to draw upon, he 
carried on a rebellious war with the Spanish autocrats 
who still controlled Venezuela,until, in the year 1821, 
he succeeded in driving out the Spanish and giving 
freedom to his native land. He then united the two 
countries under his control into a single republic, called 
Colombia, with himself as president. In another year 
he had driven the Spaniards from Ecuador and joined 
that province to his new republic, which he now named 
Greater'Colombia. 

Meanwhile the absolute monarchs in Europe were 
viewing with alarm the revolutionary exploits of San 
Martin and Bolivar and the loss of these vast lands 
by a brother monarch, the king of Spain. Fearing 
the effect on their own authority, as these new repub¬ 
lics grew and throve, the alliance of absolute monarchs, 
under Metternich’s guidance, plotted to subjugate these 
South American states and bring them again under 



























BIOGRAPHY 


170 

Spain’s despotic authority. At this England, fearing 
for her trade with South America, declared against 
such European interference in America, and President 
Monroe stated that any attempt on their part (the 
European autocrats) to control or oppress the inde¬ 
pendent American governments would be looked upon 
as an unfriendly act toward the United States.” This 
principle, enforced from that day on, saved the South 
American countries from the designs of these grasp¬ 
ing European monarchs and has, indeed, made the 
Western Hemisphere safe for democracy.” 

Bolivar, piling victory upon victory, now grew in¬ 
toxicated with his own glory and, dreaming of a great, 
united South American republic, came to believe that 
he, and he alone, was the man capable of being exalted 
to the high position of its chief executive. Building 
on the work of San Martin, who had by this time 
freed Argentina and Chili and had largely broken the 
power of Spain in Peru, he soon succeeded in winning 
independence for Upper Peru, which was then called 
Bolivia in honor of its liberator. 

These great achievements by Bolivar were watched 
with eager interest in this country and also in Europe, 
and were applauded by men who believed in demo¬ 
cratic government. Daniel Webster spoke of him in 
flattering terms j Kosciuszko sent his nephew to fight 
in his army; Lord Byron named his yacht Bolivar in 
his honor; and Lafayette wrote him a letter expressing 
his great admiration for the work he was doing. 


SAN MARTIN AND BOLIVAR 


171 

Soon after his success in Upper Peru, however, his 
health began to failj the hardships connected with many 
years of warfare were more than even his robust body 
and indomitable spirit could endure. He saw that, al¬ 
though Spanish authority in South America had been 
destroyed, he was never to realize his dream of a 
great united South American republic. The difficulties 
were, as he believed, largely due to the character of 
the people who were neither Europeans .nor North 
Americans, but rather a compound of Africa and Amer¬ 
ica.” His hopeful spirit, however, never doubted that 
great things might come in time. Neither we, nor 
the generation that is to succeed us, will see the splen¬ 
dor of the America we are founding.” 

During the last ten years of his life he was physi¬ 
cally unable to protect himself from local political 
rivals jealous of his fame, and so he banished himself 
completely from public life. 

“ The ^ Great Liberator ’ died at Santa Marta, 
abandoned and tragic, on a deserted Colombian coast, 
facing the sea, like Napoleon, at the age of forty- 
seven years, December 17, 1830.” 


GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI 

1807-1882 


Great men have sprung up from long lines of kings 
and nobles j great men have spent their early years in 
palaces j but some of the greatest men whom the world 
has ever known are those who were reared in humble 
cabins and by plain, honest parents. Italy’s great 
national hero was one of these. 

In a modest little white cottage by the seashore at 
Nice, Giuseppe Garibaldi was born on July 4, 1807. 
Giuseppe’s father, who was a sea captain, was not able 
to give his boy a good education without some sacri¬ 
fices on his own part. These he made readily j but 
Garibaldi, as a child, was frivolous and he did not 
make the best of his opportunities. He loved to play 
and entertain himself, and he was not at all studious. 
Thus it happened that he learned very little. 

Garibaldi was always extremely tender-hearted. 
When he was only a very small boy he broke the leg 
of a little animal, and he was so depressed by the in¬ 
jury he had inflicted that he wept for hours in his 
room. 

In later years he proudly stated that he had never 
missed an opportunity to help others even at the risk 
of his own life. When he was a young boy he hap- 


172 


GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI 


173 

pened to see, while out hunting with a friend, an old 
woman washing clothes beside a stream. She lost her 
balance and fell over the edge of the steep embankment 
into the water. Giuseppe, fully dressed and encum¬ 
bered by his game bag, took a dangerous plunge into 
the water and succeeded in saving the woman’s life. 
He was delighted by his success which gave him con¬ 
fidence to attempt greater deeds. 

As Giuseppe grew older he wearied of the dull 
routine of his life. Nothing remarkable had happened 
in his childhood or youth 3 no changes, no excitement. 
The wild spirit in the boy rebelled at this, and he made 
the proposition to some of his classmates that they es¬ 
cape from the confinement of the schoolroom, It was 
no sooner said than done. They seized a boat, 
equipped it with the necessary provisions, and sailed 
away from Nice. A man who happened to see the 
boys told Giuseppe’s father about it. A ship was sent 
at once after the young adventurers, who were brought 
back in deep mortification. 

Although Giuseppe was not at all attentive in school, 
he was always desirous of learning anything about the 
Italian language and government. In this he was 
handicapped, because Nice was a border town and, 
therefore, greatly influenced by the French. When 
Garibaldi had grown to manhood his father took him 
to Rome. The first sight of this city stirred a great 
longing in the young man, which he hid away in his 
heart and made his greatest aim in life. He saw not 


174 


BIOGRAPHY 



Garibaldi 


the Rome that then existed. He saw a glorified Rome, 
the capital of a strong and united Italy, freed from 
her oppressors. 

From childhood up Garibaldi had been an ardent 
lover of Italy, and he had heard that plans were on 
foot to unite the many little Italian states into a strong 
nation and to expel Austria from the peninsula. Try 
as he might, he was unable to find out where or by 
whom the movement was being carried on. He 





GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI 


175 

searched papers, books, and pamphlets, and he was 
overjoyed when he at last met a man who could tell 
him of the plans. 

Mazzini, a prominent Italian revolutionist, had come 
to the conclusion that it was useless to waste Italy’s 
strength by violent uprisings. He, therefore, organ¬ 
ized an association called Young Italy,” which aimed 
to bring about the unification of Italy through the 
education of the young men in lofty republican 
principles. 

Garibaldi joined this band and eagerly drank in all 
of its teachings. Later he took an active part in all 
the Italian uprisings and was so bold that he was 
caught and sentenced to death. The adventurous- 
young man was by no means ready to end his career. 
He escaped to South America, where he became inter¬ 
ested in the political struggles there. 

For ten years Garibaldi fought in South America in 
the interest of the people. He was always ready for 
any uprising which might bring about liberty. 

While in South America Garibaldi found himself 
melancholy and lonesome. He felt that he needed 
true companionship and determined to get married. 
He went on deck and searched with his telescope the 
small town near which his ship was anchored. When 
he found a beautiful woman he at once set about win¬ 
ning her. That evening he left the ship and went as a 
guest to her home. When the two were introduced, 
Garibaldi said boldly, “ You should be mine! ” 


BIOGRAPHY 


1^6 

The girl, Anita, raised no objection, and they were 
married immediately. Anita proved a faithful com¬ 
panion to Garibaldi, and she accompanied him on his 
return to Italy. During an unsuccessful campaign 
against the Austrians, Anita donned the soldiers’ uni¬ 
form and rode close beside her husband. In the flight 
from the Austrians, however, Anita fell ill and died. 

Broken-hearted at the death of his beloved wife 
and pursued on every side by the Austrians, Garibaldi 
left Italy and sailed for New York. For a few years 
he worked as a candle-maker on Staten Island, and in 
that time he accumulated a small fortune. This 
enabled him, on his return to Italy, to purchase the 
tiny island of Caprera, where he established his per¬ 
manent home. 

In 1859, when Victor Emmanuel, the energetic and 
democratic king of Sardinia, attacked Austria, Gari¬ 
baldi, serving in his army, achieved a glorious victory 
over the Austrians. As a result of this successful cam¬ 
paign, all the northern provinces of Italy, except 
Venetia, united with Sardinia. Garibaldi accepted a 
seat in the Sardinian parliament, and for some years 
assisted in making laws for that state. 

The movement of binding Italy into one nation, 
however, was progressing too slowly for this ardent 
revolutionist.^ He determined to take upon himself 
the responsibility of compelling the small kingdoms of 
the south to unite under the crown of Victor Emman¬ 
uel. In May, i860. Garibaldi gathered his famous 



Copyright Underwood and Underwood 


Statue of Garibaldi, Italy 










BIOGRAPHY 


178 

“ Thousand Red Shirts,” as his followers were called 
from their rough costume, and sailed from Genoa for 
Sicily, where he gained an easy victory. In the name 
of Victor Emmanuel he made himself Dictator of 
Sicily. 

Then, crossing over to the mainland, he entered 
Naples, and, meeting but slight opposition, wrested that 
kingdom from the autocratic king of Naples and, 
uniting it with Sicily, ceremoniously presented the 
crown of these combined nations to Victor Emmanuel. 
Then Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel rode side by side 
through the streets of Naples between lines of cheer¬ 
ing people. Victor Emmanuel, inspired by Garibaldi’s 
boldness, continued the struggle for a united Italy 
until Venice and Rome were under his liberal con¬ 
stitution. 

For many years Garibaldi had fought against rheu¬ 
matism. He called it his “ enemy,” and constantly 
warded it off by violent physical exercise. He would 
jump from rock to rock along the seashore until he 
was thoroughly tired; then, mounting a horse, he would 
ride hard for hours. 

Upon his retirement to Caprera, however, he was 
too old to continue this physical exercise, and the af¬ 
fliction grew steadily worse. The last few years of 
Garibaldi’s life were spent in intense pain and bitter 
poverty. In 1882, at the age of seventy-five, he died 
at his island home. 

But the “ Great Liberator’s ” ambition had been 


GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI 


179 

achieved. Austria had withdrawn her hated claims 
upon his countryj the numerous small kingdoms were 
welded into one strong, compact nation, and Rome, 
the famous city of old, was the capital of this new 
Italy. 


OTTO VON BISMARCK 
1815-1904 


As far back as the fifteenth century, the Bismarck 
family had lived in the beautiful manor house at 
Schonhausen, in Prussian Saxony. When the French 
under Napoleon invaded Prussia and the troops en¬ 
tered Schonhausen, Ferdinand Bismarck and his young 
wife fled for safety to a neighboring swamp, where 
they were forced to remain in hiding until dawn. 
When they returned next morning they found that the 
French soldiers had stripped their home of all its 
beautiful possessions collected through centuries of 
patient industry. That which hurt more than anything 
else was that the invaders had cut into shreds the 
genealogical tree, of the proud and ancient Bismarck 
family, that hung upon the walls of their home. It 
was as if the soldiers had a presentiment that a son of 
this family would one day wreak vengeance upon them, 
for it was in this house about nine years later, on April 
I, 1815, that young Otto was born, who was destined 
later to wipe out this deadly insult to his family name. 

Otto grew up in a family famous for many gen¬ 
erations in war and diplomacy. His people were 
“ Junkers,” that is, conservative landowners who hated 
liberal ideas and assumed a naturally imperious atti- 

180 


OTTO VON BISMARCK 


i 8 i 


tude toward all inferiors. Otto’s mother devoted her¬ 
self to her son’s early education but later placed him 
in the Plamann Academy in Wilhelmstrasse. Here he 
was at first homesick, disgusted by the severe rules, 
and exceedingly stubborn. He soon became accustomed 
to the discipline, however, and grew interested in the 
work. He was fond of geography, and he mastered 
the art of fencing. He stayed in the Plamann Insti¬ 
tute for about five years j and then, at Easter time, 
he went to the Frederick William Gymnasium in Ber¬ 
lin to continue his studies. 

As Otto grew older, he became more and more un¬ 
ruly. He showed a strong tendency to overstep all 
boundaries and regulations. However, he was gradu¬ 
ated with honors from the school in Berlin. 

In 1832 Otto began the study of law at the Uni¬ 
versity of Gottingen. His student life was much like 
that of others of his kind, a life of drinking and fight¬ 
ing which left scant time for studying. All of his 
quarrels were settled by duels in spite of the fact that 
at the time of his entrance to the university he was 
obliged to sign an agreement not to drink beer or fight 
a duel. Bismarck’s share of duels was twenty-eight, 
all ending happily for him except one, of which he 
bore a lifetime scar on his left cheek. 

The students had a social club called the Hannove- 
rana. In 1833 Otto made a wager with one of the boys 
in the club that in twenty years Germany would be 
united. The loser agreed to pay twenty-five bottles 


i 82 


BIOGRAPHY 


of champagne to the winner. As Germany was not 
united in 1853, Bismarck had to pay the champagne. 
It is remarkable, however, that even at such an early 
date he had a presentiment of that unification which 
to-day is an accomplished fact. 

When Bismarck was a little more than thirty years 
old and had taken for some time an active part in 
local affairs, he was appointed to a position in which he 
was responsible for the care of the dykes. At a wed¬ 
ding in Pomerania, he became acquainted with the 
daughter of Herr von Pattkamer of Reinfeld, and the 
resolute, imperious young man was strongly attracted 
by the gentle and very lovely Johanna. He won her 
love in spite of the opposition of her parents and 
married her in 1847. 

In the same year Bismarck was chosen as the rep¬ 
resentative of the Lower nobility of his district in the 
Prussian parliament which was at that time summoned 
to Berlin. From then on, this haughty nobleman, 
lover of autocracy and militarism, received one polit¬ 
ical promotion after another until he reached the very 
height of power. 

Just at the time that Bismarck entered parliament, 
the liberals in Prussia, inspired by the latest French 
revolution, were demanding a constitution. To this 
Bismarck, utterly contemptuous of the rights of the 
people, was bitterly opposed. The king, however, 
dared not refuse the clamoring mobs. He compromised 
by giving them a constitution which left most of the 













BIOGRAPHY 


184 

power to him and the military and wealthy classes 
represented in the upper house of the parliament. 

Shortly after the new king, William I, came to the 
throne he and Bismarck joined forces to carry out their 
one chief ambition — that of unifying all Germany 
under Prussia and making it dominate Europe. In 
order to achieve this they knew that they must have 
a huge army. When a bill to increase the army and to 
double the years of service required of each young 
man was introduced into parliament, the lower house, 
which represented the people, hated Bismarck, and dis¬ 
approved of the king’s military plans, refused to vote 
the money. All the newspapers came out against the 
heavy tax this large army would require. The upper 
house agreed to the king’s demands. The lower house 
steadily refused. Then Bismarck, on his own author¬ 
ity, decided that, since there was a deadlock between 
the two houses, the king had a right to use his absolute 
power to carry out his schemes. This angered the 
people, who felt that Bismarck was robbing them of 
their constitutional rights which they had gained and 
was forcing them back again into a return to absolut¬ 
ism. He was opposed on every side. His unpopular¬ 
ity was further increased by a speech in which he said, 
“ The German question cannot be settled by anything 
except blood and iron.” In spite of all opposition, 
however, Bismarck, fired by the ancient Hohenzollern 
spirit, established the greatest military system of 
Europe. 


OTTO VON BISMARCK 185 

Bismarck had long desired to increase Prussia by 
annexing the province of Schleswig-Holstein^ belong¬ 
ing to Denmark but largely inhabited by German 
people. He now persuaded Austria to help take these 
lands from Denmark, and they easily defeated the 
small Danish army. As soon as these provinces had 
been seized, the crafty Bismarck found an excuse for 
quarreling with Austria over their disposal and, backed 
by the powerful army he had organized, he defeated 
her in less than a month and ousted her from the 
union of German states, putting Prussia in her place 
as head of the North German Confederation. 

Four years later Bismarck continued his policy of 
blood and iron ” in the great war with France. 
Hatred of the French had been born into Otto von 
Bismarck. The suffering of his family a few years 
before his birth, and the downtrodden state of Prussia 
when he first began to realize the conditions, had left 
a deep impression on his mind. He had once 
remarked: 

“The French are savagesj take away the cook, the 
tailor, and the hairdresser, and only the redskin will 
be left.” 

Many other Germans still harbored revengeful feel¬ 
ings against their old oppressor, France, while in 
France there were thousands who, recalling the days 
of their European domination under Napoleon, longed 
for renewed conquests. In both countries the war 
parties were trying to find an excuse for a conflict. 


i86 


BIOGRAPHY 


Bismarck, who was especially anxious to fight the 
French, so altered a telegram sent by Napoleon III to 
William as to make it appear that the French king 
had insulted the Prussian ruler. This trick worked; 
for the French, in anger at William’s reply, declared 
war with Prussia in July, 1870. In seven weeks’ time 
Bismarck’s armies had defeated the French and taken 
their emperor prisoner. Four months later Paris fell 
before their siege and France signed an armistice. In 
the peace terms Prussia took Alsace-Lorraine from the 
French and laid upon the French people the heavy war 
penalty of a billion dollars. In this defeat and humili¬ 
ation Bismarck was strengthening the bitterness of feel¬ 
ing between the two countries that was to break out 
again in the great war of 1914. As a result of this 
overwhelming victory, Prussia won over the support of 
all the South German as well as North German states 
and Bismarck’s vision of a United Germany under 
Prussian domination was realized. 

From this time on it was Bismarck’s task to 
strengthen the empire by welding together all these 
German states in a firm national bond. Finding that 
the socialists, following the teachings of Karl Marx, 
were growing very powerful as a party, he used all his 
energies to defeat them. He succeeded in getting a 
law passed which prohibited them from meeting, dis¬ 
cussing, or writing about any changes in the state, and 
this law remained in effect for twelve years. In the 
meantime he put into effect many of the reforms rec- 


OTTO VON BISMARCK 


187 


Bismarck 


Lenbach 


ommended by the socialists in order to win the working¬ 
men to a belief that the state was striving for their 
good and that the absolute form of government was 
a better one than the democratic control urged by the 
socialists. He went back in this policy to the benevo¬ 
lent despotism of Frederick the Great, who was willing 
to do everything for his people except to give them 
self-government. 

Having made Germany a powerful empire, Bis¬ 
marck now turned to the idea of enriching her by 




i88 


BIOGRAPHY 


getting colonies. In a short time he succeeded in ac¬ 
quiring vast territory in Africa, and thus became a rival 
of the other countries of Europe in their scramble for 
land. In 1882 he made an alliance with Austria and 
Italy, known as the Triple Alliance, a friendship that 
had much to do with the outbreak of the World War. 

Bismarck was growing old and grizzled in the serv¬ 
ice of the German empire, and tried several times to 
retire, but the emperor would always reply, “ Never! ” 
Once the emperor, remonstrating against the decision 
of his old servant to retire, said: ^^Eh! What? You 
pretend to be fatigued, overworked, too old. Look at 
me! I am much older than you and I still ride 
horseback.” 

No doubt, Sirej that is natural,” replied Bismarck. 

The rider always outlasts the mount.” 

When the new Emperor William II came to the 
throne in 1888, he wished to be an absolute monarch. 
He regarded the chancellor as meddlesome and old- 
fashioned. Bismarck, on his part, was disgusted with 
the young, inexperienced ruler. When he handed in 
his resignation it was accepted with a show of reluc¬ 
tance, although William II was relieved that the chan¬ 
cellor was out of his way. 

The rest of the life of Germany’s “ iron chancellor ” 
was spent in the privacy of his home. His wife died 
in 1894, and he himself in 1904 at the age of eighty- 
nine years. 


QUEEN VICTORIA 
1819-1901 

The Duke of Kent had had a presentiment that if 
he were ever to have a child, it would some day be sov¬ 
ereign of England. He determined, therefore, that 
his child should*be English-born. 

At that time, in the year i8i8, the Duke of Kent, 
who was the fourth son of King George III, was living 
on the continent. His wife was a charming, though 
peculiar, German woman, the Princess Victoria Louisa 
of Saxe-Coburg. It was only in the year 1819 that 
the Duke and Duchess of Kent arrived in England, 
where they established a residence in Kensington Pal¬ 
ace. There, on May 24, 1819, a little girl was born 
for whom the duke had high expectations. 

The rest of the world paid little attention to the 
royal infant. There were other probable heirs to the 
throne and the chances of the little princess were very 
faint. Nevertheless, her father gave her a name 
worthy of the highest position she could attain — 
Alexandrina Victoria. 

The Duke of Kent adored his little Drina,” as the 
baby was called 5 unfortunately, he died before she had 
reached her second birthday. 

At the death of the last possible heir to the throne 

189 











QUEEN VICTORIA 


191 

the Princess Victoria was confidently regarded as the 
coming sovereign. The world began to take some in¬ 
terest in the little girl who was being so carefully 
trained in the nursery at Kensington. No whisper 
of these prophecies had as yet reached “ little Drina.” 
She played with her dolls or romped about the gar¬ 
dens j but she would not learn her letters. She would 
fly into a rage, stamp her little foot, and scream, “ I 
will not! I will not! ” 

The wise German mother saw the truth of the 
situation immediately. Little Drina had been badly 
spoiled by the adoring servants and nurses. She rem¬ 
edied the condition by engaging as governess the 
Baroness Lehzen, a clever, kind woman, and yet very 
firm. From that time forth there was no trouble with 
the princess. 

Victoria understood quite well her position as prin¬ 
cess. When a little girl of her own age (six years) 
was brought to play with her, Victoria was offended 
by the familiar attitude with which the little visitor 
handled her toys. You must not touch those,” she 
quickly told her friend., “They are mine; and I may 
call you Jane, but you must not call me Victoria.” 

One morning the king, driving through the park in 
his phaeton, met the Duchess of Kent and her child. 
Strangely enough, this grouchy old man had taken a 
fancy to the little heiress. “ Pop her in,” were his 
orders, and off they drove to Virginia Water, where a 
band was playing. The king turned to his small niece: 


192 


BIOGRAPHY 


“ What is your favorite piece? The band will play 
it,” he said. 

^ God Save the King/ sir,” was the instant reply. 

The king was immensely flattered and thereupon 
decided that he had a very wise niece. This answer is 
an illustration of her tact for which she was afterward 
famous. 

Not until her eleventh year was the princess told of 
the destiny that awaited her. The Baroness Lehzen 
broke the newsj and the little girl, suddenly feeling a 
heavy, strange responsibility thrust upon her, slipped 
away by herself and cried over it. 

The king, finding himself weakening, prayed that 
he might live until the Princess Victoria should become 
of age. A few months after her eighteenth birthday 
— the date of her legal majority — an attack of ill¬ 
ness brought an end to his reign. This was in the 
early hours of the morning of June 20, 1837. When 
it was announced that all was over, the Archbishop of 
Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain ordered a car¬ 
riage and drove post-haste to Kensington. They ar¬ 
rived at the palace at five oYlock. The Duchess of 
Kent aroused her daughter from her sleep and told her 
that the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyng- 
ham were there and wished to see her. Clothed in a 
dressing gown and slippers, with her long, fair hair 
falling about her shoulders, this small, bewildered girl 
went alone into the room where the messengers were 
waiting to proclaim her Queen of England. 


QUEEN VICTORIA 


193 

The queen took this new responsibility very seri¬ 
ously. She asked for no advice from her mother j in 
fact, she took some delight in breaking away from her 
mother’s constant vigilance. The Duchess of Kent was 
forced to cease her domineering influence over her 
daughter j and the queen, with the advice of her prime 
minister. Lord Melbourne, and the other ministers 
of state, managed the business of governing quite 
smoothly and very wisely. 

Victoria was practically a stranger to her subjects. 
Her mother had carefully hidden her from the public 
eyej and now that she had become Queen of England, 
the people were overwhelmed with curiosity. At her 
first Council, Victoria filled the whole gathering with 
admiration and astonishment j the Duke of Welling¬ 
ton, Sir Robert Peel, Croker, and Greville were among 
the notables who waited, impatient with curiosity, for 
her appearance. They saw, when the doors were 
thrown open, a slender, perfectly composed girl, drawn 
up to her full height of four feet eight inches, moving 
forward to her seat with great dignity. She was not 
beautiful, but her blue eyes were calm and unafraid. 

This child — Queen of all England! And England 
was overjoyed. The people had been weary, worn 
out, and thoroughly disgusted with the selfish, ridicu¬ 
lous old kings who had preceded Victoria. Her ac¬ 
cession was like the coming of spring after a cold and 
bitter winter. The thought of this innocent little girl, 
with fair hair and rosy cheeks, seated upon the throne 


BIOGRAPHY 


194 

of England, filled the hearts of her subjects with loyal 
affection and enthusiasm. 

England prospered under this new attitude of her 
people. The most flourishing ages in the history of 
England have been during the reigns of women, and 
it was prophesied that Victoria would prove herself to 
be “ an Elizabeth without her tyranny, an Anne with¬ 
out her weakness.” 

Everything that was reported of the young queen 
made it seem more than likely that these hopes would 
be fulfilled. She had a keen mind, good judgment, 
and adapted herself to her new duties quickly and 
skillfully. 

Our story, now takes us to the court of King Leopold 
of Saxe-Coburg. King Leopold, who was Queen Vic¬ 
toria’s uncle, had two sons, Ernest and Albert. It had 
long been planned by the parents of Albert and Victoria 
that some day the two should marry. When Albert 
was only three years old he had been told that he would 
. one day marry “ the little English Mayflower,” and 
he grew up with a firm intention of doing so. 

When Albert and Victoria were both seventeen, he 
visited her at Kensington. She was attracted by his 
beautiful physical appearance, and stated frankly in 
her diary that she loved “ her dearest cousin Albert.” 
When Victoria became queen, however, her views 
changed. She didn’t want to marry Albert 5 in fact, 
she didn’t want to marry any one. She was perfectly 
satisfied with her position, with the business of gov- 


QUEEN VICTORIA 


195 

erning running smoothly., and Lord Melbourne to 
advise her. 

When, however, Albert made a visit to England in 
the fall of 1839, Victoria forgot her determination not 
to marry, fell in love with him for the second time, 
and a few days after his arrival she asked him to marry 
her. The prince consented and returned to his home 
for a last visit before his marriage. A few months 
later he again came to England, and on the tenth of 
February, 1840, he and Victoria were married in the 
old Royal Chapel of St. James. 

The young couple really loved each other, but 
nevertheless there were many conflicts of angry wills. 
Neither Victoria nor Albert was accustomed to play 
second fiddle and both were quick-tempered and very 
obstinate. In many cases their tastes were very dif¬ 
ferent. Albert’s simple home training had accustomed 
him to early hours, and the long-drawn-out court func¬ 
tions were so boring to him that he was often caught 
nodding when ten o’clock came. This did not fit in 
well with Victoria’s energetic enthusiasm for amuse¬ 
ment which often led her to dance through the night 
and even until sunrise. 

Albert was rather easy-going in these early days; 
he thought it saved a great deal of trouble and worry 
just to let things slide. The duties of prince consort 
at first bored him and he hated politics. Very gradu¬ 
ally in the course of time his attitude changed; he 
began to take more interest in politics and even con- 



Sir Edzvin Landseer 

The Queen, the Princess Royal, and the Prince of Wales 





QUEEN VICTORIA 


197 

sented to be present when Victoria interviewed her 
ministers. 

As the years passed Victoria and Albert found their 
married life quite happy. Nine times the big guns, 
which proclaimed the birth of a royal infant, boomed 
out. First it was the Princess Victoria, then the Prince 
of Wales, and as the royal family grew the presence 
of the children drew the queen and the prince consort 
more closely together. 

Albert’s interest in politics grew daily, and accepting 
his great responsibilities as adviser to the queen, he 
devoted himself earnestly to the business of govern¬ 
ment. Studying, conferring, and directing, he and Vic¬ 
toria worked side by side. Years ago she had ceased 
“ to dance throughout the night.” She too became an 
early riser, but no matter how promptly she came to 
her desk, she usually found that Albert was already 
there and had prepared the papers for the day’s work. 

This happy, busy life in the English court was sud¬ 
denly broken up by the death of the prince consort. 
This great calamity occurred when Victoria was forty- 
two years old, and, though she lived to be eighty-two, 
she always felt that her true life had ceased with her 
husband’s. Over night the merry Queen of Eng¬ 
land ” became sad, quiet, and heavy-hearted. She 
turned faithfully to the work which demanded her 
attention, and in her close application to affairs of state 
there developed that tendency to dictate to others, to 
insist obstinately on her own way, and to fly into a 



198 BIOGRAPHY 


F. X. Winterhalter 

The Prince Consort — The Husband of Queen Victoria 

temper with those who opposed her. It was during 
these years that the reins of her government were 
largely in the hands of her two famous prime ministers, 
Gladstone and Disraeli. There is no doubt that the 
smooth-tongued Disraeli found more favor with the 
queen than the deeply respectful Gladstone, and that 
she was far more interested in the visions of Colonial 
Empire that Disraeli painted than the problems of 
internal reform that Gladstone urged. 

When Victoria had reigned for fifty years there was 








’-S'JS.* - 


Copyright Reinthal y Newman, N. Y. 


The Queen 

Painting by H. Van Angeli 





200 


BIOGRAPHY 


a magnificent “ Diamond Jubilee ” in England. This 
was one of the most splendid spectacles of modern 
times. To it came sovereigns of Europe — among 
them the German emperor, Victoria’s grandson, and 
representatives of all the widely scattered dominions of 
England’s great empire to pay homage to Victoria. 

Meanwhile her family circle had enlarged, and in 
the midst of her children and grandchildren the ageing 
queen found a renewal of happiness. Her fits of irri¬ 
tability grew less frequent and the merry smile again 
brightened her features. 

Nevertheless, Queen Victoria realized that she was 
weakening. Her eyesight failed, but she still attended 
diligently to her duties. There appeared no symptoms 
of a definite disease j the long, vigorous reign had ex¬ 
hausted her strength, and life was gently slipping away. 
She died on January 22, 1901. 

A surge of grief swept over the country. The vast 
majority of her subjects could not remember a time 
when Victoria had not been reigning over them. 
Slowly the English people began to realize their loss — 
it was the death of a queen who had reigned for more 
than sixty years. 


WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE 
1809-1898 

In the roll of English statesmen there is probably 
no one more highly esteemed than William Ewart 
Gladstone. His long life of service in the English 
parliament was an incessant fight for reform, and all ' 
his efforts were stimulated by a noble and conscientious 
desire to do what his convictions told him was right. 
He was Victoria’s greatest prime minister and the most 
remarkable orator of the nineteenth century. 

William Gladstone was born in Liverpool on the 
twenty-ninth of December, 1809 — a very famous 
year in English and American history, for in this same 
year were born also Alfred Tennyson, Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, Edgar Allan Poe, and Abraham Lincoln. 
From his mother’s side, Gladstone could claim that in 
his veins ran the blood of Henry III of England and 
Robert Bruce of Scotland. He himself never spoke 
of this royal lineage, but much preferred to be thought 
of as a representative of the middle class, for whose 
rights through life he so strongly contended. He was 
very proud, however, of his Scotch ancestry on both 
sides. The family name, traced back to 1296, was 
originally “ Gledstanes,” meaning hawk^s rocky not an 
unfitting name for a man of Gladstone’s rugged 


201 


202 


BIOGRAPHY 


strength. It was not until Gladstone was twenty-six 
years of age that his father changed the name to the 
one now so well known throughout the world. 

Sir John, the father, was a great merchant prince 
of Liverpool, a member of parliament and a baronet. 
William was his fourth son. His father’s training 
of his sons had much to do with William’s skill as 
a debater. No opportunity was ever lost, in the fam¬ 
ily circle, to carry on an argument. Nothing was ever 
taken for grantedj in every subject that came up for 
discussion each lad was put on his mettle to defend his 
case or to disprove the arguments of his opponents. 
They argued as to whether the. fish should be boiled 
or fried j whether it would rain on the following day 5 
whether a window should or should not be . opened. 
This was all done in perfect good humor and must 
have been splendid preparation for later debates in 
the House of Commons. 

When he was eleven, William entered .Eton and 
worked hard as a student. He was an exceedingly 
steady boy and did not join any of the wild parties 
on which his fellow classmates went. Indeed, he 
earned a certain amount of unpopularity by his per¬ 
sistence at serious study. Eton, at that time, was 
famous chiefly for its teaching of languages and math¬ 
ematics. Poor William had great difficulty in mathe¬ 
matics j addition and subtraction were his bugbears. 
No one who saw him struggling with his arithmetic 
in those days would have supposed that years later he 


WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE 


203 

would become Chancellor of the Exchequer and the 
greatest financier in England. 

At twenty-one William entered Oxford University, 
from which he was graduated with high honors. He 
was president of the Debating Union and had organized 
a new debating club, calling it “ Weg,” after his own 
initials. 

After graduation his first inclination was to enter 
the church, but this his father refused to allow him 
to do. Gladstone was a strongly religious young man, 
and retained throughout his life a great interest in 
church history and church problems. In 1832, while 
on a visit to Italy, a country which he loved and 
later served so well, he was called home to become a 
candidate for a seat in the House of Commons. In 
spite of opposition he was elected. It is said that his 
personal appearance, as well as his speeches, had much 
to do with his success. 

At this time he was a striking and handsome young 
man, physically strong, with splendid radiant eyes 
glowing out from under a mass of dark hair. There 
was not a dandy in the House who did not envy that 

fine head of jet-black hair.” During his first years 
in the House he was called “ Handsome Gladstone.” 
He was full of energy and could speak without fatigue 
for hours at a stretch, and, like Pitt and Napoleon, 
wasted but little time in sleep. 

In the first parliament of Queen Victoria’s reign 
there was a strong revival of the anti-slavery agitation. 


204 


BIOGRAPHY 



George Frederick Watts 

Gladstone 


and Gladstone delivered a powerful speech for slavery. 
This debate, although on the unpopular side of the 
question, lifted him to the front rank of parliamentary 
orators. Gladstone was by birth, by education, and by 
all his early associations an aristocrat and a conservative. 
How he gradually developed more progressive ideas 
and closed his career as the great Liberal prime minister 
of England is an interesting story. 

The following year he was ordered by his physicians 




WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE 


205 

to Rome to rest and repair the injury to his eyes that 
had resulted from too much study by candle light. 
There he met and became engaged to Catherine Glynne, 
the daughter of Sir Stephen Glynne of Hawarden 
Castle. They were later married at this castle, a beauti¬ 
ful old seat in Flintshire, where they spent many happy 
years. Gladstone’s kind, amiable, and hospitable nature 
attracted to them numerous friends. They had several 
children, two of whom were later members of the 
House of Commons. 

When Gladstone had been in parliament a little oyer 
ten years he received the much coveted honor of repre¬ 
senting Oxford in parliament. But in the midst of his 
political activities he was forced to take his family to 
Naples, because one of his children was ill and the 
doctors advised a southern climate. While there Glad¬ 
stone learned that the king had exiled or imprisoned, 
without trial, a great number of the citizens of Naples. 
His sympathies were immediately stirred. He found 
pathetic and terrible conditions in the Italian prisons. 
On his return to England he exposed all these condi¬ 
tions in two published letters. These letters created a 
great stir, and, while nothing was done at that time, 
they bore fruit years later when Garibaldi and a free 
people marched into Naples and drove out the oppres¬ 
sors. Garibaldi himself declared that Gladstone’s let¬ 
ters were “ the first trumpet-call of Italian liberty.” 

Returning to parliament, Gladstone came into his 
first real conflict with a man whom he was to oppose 


2 o 6 


BIOGRAPHY 


in public affairs for many years. Benjamin Disraeli, 
then Chancellor of the Exchequer, favored a new tax¬ 
ing law which he explained in his financial statement 
to the House of Commons. Mr. Gladstone made a 
brilliant and able speech against this bill, defeated it, 
and was given Disraeli’s position as Chancellor of the 
Exchequer. Soon after this Gladstone’s plan for re¬ 
forms in taxation was adopted by the government. 
These reforms did much to equalize taxation — espe¬ 
cially relieving the poor of excessive burdens. This 
was one of Gladstone’s great achievements for England. 

When our Civil War broke out Gladstone sided with 
the English upper class against the North. In 1862 he 
delivered a speech in which he said that Jefferson Davis 
“ had made an army, had made a navy, and, more than 
that, had made a nation.” Five years later he cou¬ 
rageously admitted his mistake. “ I must confess,” he 
said, “ that I was wrong. My sympathies were then as 
now with the American people. But I see now that 
there could be no strong nation unless the two sections 
were united.” 

As Gladstone grew older, he lost his aristocratic and 
conservative spirit and became more and more the 
understanding and sympathetic friend of the people. 
One of the things that aroused his interest in their 
behalf was his realization that, though England was 
supposed to be a representative country, only a few 
men could vote. It was in 1866 that he became really 
“ The People’s William.” In that year he ceased to 


WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE 


207 

be the representative of aristocratic Oxford and threw 
himself whole-heartedly into the support of a Reform 
Bill which was to extend the vote to four hundred thou¬ 
sand of the people. He said, I take my stand upon 
the broad principle that the enfranchisement of capable 
citizens, be they few or be they many, — and if they 
be many, so much the better, — is an addition to the 
strength of the country.” Disraeli, his opponent, 
taunted Gladstone with his earlier utterance against 
extension of suffrage, and in a brilliant attack defeated 
the measure. In the following year Disraeli brought 
in his Tory Reform Bill for suffrage and succeeded 
where Gladstone had failed. It is said, however, that 
this bill was so changed to meet the wishes of Gladstone 
that by the time it was passed there was nothing left of 
the original bill except the first word, “ Whereas.” 

The years 1868-1874 under Gladstone’s leadership 
as prime minister have been called The Golden Age 
of Liberalism.” It was during this period that Glad¬ 
stone brought about his first great reforms for the Irish 
people in whose problems he was deeply interested. 
He saw the Irish people, many of them Catholics and 
many very poor, struggling under the burden of sup¬ 
porting the State Protestant Church, and he gave them 
relief by his famous “ Irish Disestablishment Law.” 
Another of the great injustices suffered by the Irish was 
in connection with the land. Most of the land in Ire¬ 
land was owned by Englishmen living in England. 
The Irish peasants were at the mercy of these English 


208 


BIOGRAPHY 


landlords who had the right to evict them without 
warning and take over the improvements they had 
made without paying for them. Such evictions were 
not infrequent and often caused the cruelest suffering. 
Gladstone’s land reform did much to remedy these 
injustices. 

Two other interesting reforms of this period were 
the establishment of a system of national education and 
of the secret ballot system in voting. The latter helped 
to put an end to the disgraceful bribery in elections and 
enabled the poor men to vote as they pleased without 
fear of punishment by some powerful person after¬ 
ward. In 1884 Gladstone succeeded, by a new Reform 
Bill, in so extending the right to vote that England had 
practically universal manhood suffrage. 

Having secured church and land reforms for the 
Irish, Gladstone turned, in later years, all his efforts 
toward securing for them a truly representative gov¬ 
ernment of their own. This was the greatest interest 
of his old age. In 1886, when he was prime minister 
for the third time, he introduced his first Home Rule 
Bill for Ireland. This was passed by the House of 
Commons, but it was rejected by the Lords. A few 
years later he again made an effort to pass such a bill, 
and again it met the same fate. It was not until a 
quarter of a century later that Ireland achieved that 
which Gladstone gave so much of his life to bring 
about. 

At the age of eighty-three Gladstone retired from 


WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE 


209 

public service. But a few years later, when all Eng¬ 
land was stirred by the suffering of the Armenians who 
were being ill-treated by the Turks, the people re¬ 
called the sufferings of the Neapolitans and cried, “ Oh, 
for an hour of Gladstone! To this appeal Gladstone 
spoke in public for the last time at the age of eighty- 
seven. 

On Gladstone’s retirement Queen Victoria offered 
him an earldom. This he gratefully refused, pre¬ 
ferring to remain known by the title of which he was 
most proud — The Grand Old Man.” He had 
served the public throughout his life with an eager 
desire to do the right thing at all times. Sometimes 
he took a wrong view of things, but he never acted 
except from the highest motives. He was born to 
wealth, luxury, and every opportunity of the aristo¬ 
crats, and yet he spent his life trying, at the expense 
of his own class, to improve the conditions of the mass 
of people everywhere. “ The rising hope of the stern 
and unbending Tories,” when he first entered parlia¬ 
ment, he became the most daring, liberal innovator 
the century had seen.” 


BENJAMIN DISRAELI 
Lord Beaconsfield 

1804-1881 

Gladstone’s great political opponent in parliament 
for half a century was Benjamin Disraeli. No two men 
could be found more different in character and polit¬ 
ical ideals than these great statesmen who alternately 
held the reins of Queen Victoria’s government for 
many years. Disraeli, who first entered parliament as 
a radical, soon became the staunchest of Tories and 
remained a conservative through all his long parlia¬ 
mentary career. In contrast to Gladstone’s interest in 
home reforms, Disraeli thought England’s greatness 
in the future depended upon her control of lands in all 
parts of the world. 

Benjamin Disraeli was the descendant of a Hebrew 
family who were driven out of Spain by the Inquisition 
and took refuge in the Venetian territories, where they 
continued as merchants for four hundred years before 
going to England. Benjamin was born in 1804 oi* 
1805, it is not known which, the second child of Isaac 
and Maria D’Israeli. He had an elder sister, Sarah j 
and two younger brothers, Ralph and James, who were 
later to be made deputy clerk of parliament and com¬ 
missioner of inland revenue. 


210 


BENJAMIN DISRAELI 2ii 

Although Benjamin was born a Jew, he did not re¬ 
main a member of his ancestral faith, because a Mr. 
Rodgers, a poet, took a fancy to him and, anxious that 
his religion should not bar his success in life, had him 
baptized into the Christian Church. 

When he was fifteen years old he was sent to the 
Unitarian school at Walthamstow. This was to be his 
first taste of school life, for up to this time he had been 
tutored by his father. His Jewish name and appear¬ 
ance instantly made him the butt of the school. Finally 
he turned on his tormentors and challenged the biggest 
boy in the school to single combat. The result of the 
fight was that from that time forth no one ever called 
‘^Old Clo’s! Old Clo’s! ” within his hearing. 

At an early age he became a prominent figure in 
London, where he met many distinguished characters, 
one of whom was Louis Napoleon. . 

Disraeli’s long raven locks, eyes bright with intel¬ 
ligence and vivacity, regular nose, lisping voice, effemi¬ 
nate air, kid gloves, black velvet dress-coat lined with 
white satin, and gold-handled cane outdandied even 
the leaders of that age of dandies.” Hetliked to wear 
many gold chains, hung here and there on his. vest, 
and he had peculiar semicircular wrinkles on each side 
of his mouth which gave him the look of a humorous 
actor. 

When a young man of twenty-two years, he pub¬ 
lished his first novel, Vtvian Grey^ the most popular 
book of the season, which made him the lion of the 



Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) 


»* 

' V 
















































































BENJAMIN DISRAELI 213 

hour.’’ For the next three years he traveled abroad, 
visiting many places of interest in Europe and the 
Levant. While he was in Jerusalem he tried to enter 
the Mosque of Omar at the risk of his life. 

Up to this time he was wavering between a political 
and literary career. He was enjoying success as a 
novelist, and in his novels he often took pleasure in 
ridiculing the aristocracy. However, the events of 
1832 brought these doubts to a close when the agita¬ 
tion for reform swept like a storm over the land and 
carried Disraeli with it. Upon the advice of a prom¬ 
inent politician who pointed out to him that all clever 
young men were going in for radicalism and that the 
party was sadly in need of brains, he joined the 
Radicals. 

When in April, 1832, a vacancy arose in parliament, 
he put himself forward as a candidate from High 
Wycombe. On the thirteenth of June the candidates 
made their public entry into the town. Disraeli ar¬ 
rived in a carriage drawn by four white horses, accom¬ 
panied by a crowd of admirers and escorted by a band. 
He blew kisses to the fairer sex who watched from 
windows. He also bowed, occasionally, to his friends. 

In order to be heard and seen by all, he perched 
himself atop the Red Lion Inn, the chief hostelry of 
the town. He spoke for a full hour, attacking his po¬ 
litical opponents with bitter and sarcastic words. The 
speech was delivered with energy and animation and 
accompanied with striking gestures. Although it was 


214 


BIOGRAPHY 


effective, he was defeated by Colonel Grey. This, 
however, did not discourage him, and when parliament 
was dissolved in August, he decided to try again. 

This time there were three candidates for two seats 
— a Lord Carrington, who was sure of a seat. Colonel 
Grey, and Disraeli. The Mr. Disraeli of the second 
election was very different from the Mr. Disraeli of 
the first. In the first he had been a fiery and uncom¬ 
promising Radical j in the second he was willing to make 
friends with the Tories. He was again defeated, how¬ 
ever, by Colonel Grey. But he was still unconquered. 
He showed in the hour of defeat the spirit of elastic 
self-confidence and steadiness of purpose, to which he 
owed a great deal of life’s success. In 1837 he won 
his fight. 

When he first took his seat in parliament he was 
jeered because of his peculiar appearance. He wore 
highly colored clothes and his speeches were very flow¬ 
ery. Disraeli had not been long in parliament before 
his views began to change, and he finally went over 
completely to the Tory party and remained conservative 
throughout his long career. His great ability in time 
won over the admiration of many who had formerly 
laughed at him. 

When the old leader of the Conservatives in the 
House of Commons died, the bulk of the Tories fell 
under the leadership of Disraeli j for thirty years he 
dominated the Conservative party. 

One of the questions on which Disraeli and Gladstone 


BENJAMIN DISRAELI 215 

took opposite sides was about the policy of taxing im¬ 
ports to England. Disraeli believed that unless a tax 
were put upon manufactured goods coming in from 
other countries, their low price would ruin the English 
manufacturers of similar goods, who would be unable 
to make and sell goods cheaply enough to compete with 
them. He declared Free Trade, untaxed importation, 
would mean the bankruptcy of England. Usually 
keen and far seeing, Disraeli was, in this case, wrong 
in his prophecies. Gladstone, in the face of his opposi¬ 
tion, made Great Britain a free trade nation, and ten 
thousand factories sprang up and prosperity came to 
England such as she had never known before. 

In 1852 Disraeli astonished all London by marrying 
Mrs. Wyndham Lewis, whose husband had not been 
dead for quite a year. After the marriage Disraeli no 
longer had any worries about election bills and debts, 
as his wife had an income of several thousand pounds 
a year. 

During the many years that the Liberals were in 
power, Disraeli, as a member of the Opposition, used 
all his fund of wit and sarcasm to flout and heckle his 
opponents. Gladstone, who nearly always took things 
too seriously, was the frequent target of his quick and 
sometimes flippant retorts. 

Disraeli, who had been the real leader of the Con¬ 
servatives for many years, became its recognized head 
in 1866, when he was made prime minister. It was 
during his brief year in this position that he achieved 


2i6 


BIOGRAPHY 


the remarkable feat of getting his aristocratic Tory 
party to pass the Reform Bill for the extension of the 
vote to the working class. Gladstone, who had intro¬ 
duced such a bill the year before, had been defeated. 
The people were angry and disappointed. By this 
time, owing to the growth of newspapers, railroads, and 
cheap postal rates, they were much better educated and 
informed than ever before. The increasing size of 
their labor organizations made them much more power¬ 
ful. The news, coming just at this time, of the defeat 
of the aristocratic South in our Civil War, considered 
a great victory for the workingman, gave them addi¬ 
tional courage. Public opinion became strong for the 
reform. There was continual rioting outside'of par¬ 
liament during the debates. The Tories, in alarm, 
introduced a new bill for reform. Disraeli was taunted 
for offering a measure which he had just opposed, but 
he was farseeing enough to realize that the demand 
for reform was too strong to be ignored. Reform must 
come, and he wanted to give the Conservative party the 
glory of winning it. To the protests of the Tories, who 
were alarmed at extending the right to vote to so many 
people, Disraeli replied that the main thing was to 
“ dish the Whigs.” 

In its final form the bill was even more far-reaching 
than Gladstone’s had been. It doubled the number of 
voters. From then on two thirds of the men of the 
country were voting, and parliament for the first time 
was under the control of the mass of the people. 


BENJAMIN DISRAELI 217 

Disraeli now very skillfully planned to unite, under 
the Conservative standards, the aristocrats and work¬ 
ing people against the great middle class represented 
by the Liberals. His triumph, however, was short 
lived, for the next election showed that the majority of 
the people preferred Gladstone and the Liberal party 
as the real friends of the workingman. The Conserva¬ 
tives were defeated, and his old enemy, Gladstone, took 
his position as prime minister. 

If he had wished, Disraeli now might have been 
knighted and retired to the House of Lords, but instead 
he prevailed upon Queen Victoria to confer a coronet 
upon his wife, who was on her deathbed. She lived 
four hours after receiving this honor. No act of his 
life ever gave him as great pride and pleasure as this 
one. After his wife’s death, he remained in the House 
of Commons, where he could watch and criticize what 
was being done. For six years he sat in the House, 
without real political power, but assisting by his jeers 
and sarcastic jokes the gradual ebb of the Liberal popu¬ 
larity. Just before the final defeat of the Liberals, 
Disraeli described their ministers, as he looked at them 
sitting on the front bench in the House, as a “ row of 
extinct volcanoes.” 

In 1874 Disraeli’s party was once more victorious, 
and he again took the wheel. During this last term, as 
prime minister, he began to have visions of world rule 
for England. Ever since the time of Columbus and 
other Spanish and Portuguese explorers the great Euro- 


2i8 


BIOGRAPHY 


pean powers had held colonies in foreign lands, but, up 
until now, they had not been considered of very great 
worth. As a French statesman said, Colonies are like 
fruits which drop from the parent tree as soon as they 
are ripe.” Gladstone was among those who held this 
opinion, and during his years in power he had taken no 
interest in colonial enterprise, much to the disgust of 
Disraeli, who contemptuously called him a Little 
Englander.” Now was Disraeli’s opportunity to carry 
out his imperial ambitions for England. 

He had strong support in this policy. The newly 
rich factory owners wanted more markets for their 
manufactured goods, sources of raw material for their 
factories, as well as new fields for investing their in¬ 
creasing wealth. As the spread of the Industrial 
Revolution had brought a similar growth in the indus¬ 
tries of France and Germany, they also were looking 
abroad for colonies. Disraeli’s new Conservative ma¬ 
jority, fearing these rivals in trade, believed strongly 
in imperialism for England. He was sustained, also, 
by popular interest, which produced a music-hall ditty 
that furnished the name “ Jingo ” to the enthusiasm 
that began to prevail for foreign aggression. 

On one occasion while fervently speaking in favor 
of further conquest for England, Disraeli held out the 
dazzling dream that England might gain untold lands. 
“ We’ve got the ships; weVe got the men; we’ve got 
the money, too! ” 

It was not long before he found an opportunity to 


BENJAMIN DISRAELI 219 

advance British imperialism. Soon after the great 
French engineer, De Lesseps, had completed the Suez 
Canal, Disraeli took advantage of the bankrupt khedive 
of Egypt and bought from him the controlling interest 
in the canal. This gave England control of the new 
gateway to her colonies in India and Australia. In 
1876 he conferred on Queen Victoria the title of 
Empress of India, not only as a personal compliment, 
but as a proof of the vastness and importance of British 
possessions in Asia. 

For many years England had feared that Russia, 
ambitious since the time of Peter the Great to seize 
Constantinople, would get down to the Mediterranean 
and menace England’s possessions in India. In order 
to prevent this, she had made an alliance with Turkey, 
who held Constantinople. Now, the country was sud¬ 
denly shocked by news of terrible atrocities committed 
by the Turks against their subjects in the Balkan Penin¬ 
sula. Gladstone urged the English to break their 
“unholy” alliance with the Turkj but Disraeli, more 
interested in advancing England’s trade than in pre¬ 
venting human suffering, refused. When Russia, glad 
of an opportunity to attack her ancient enemy, went 
to the rescue of the oppressed Turkish subjects and de¬ 
feated the sultan, Disraeli saw to it that the Balkan 
territory that Turkey lost did not go to Russia but be¬ 
came largely independent. 

He next turned to India and South Africa, where he 
carried on petty wars to advance England’s possessions. 


BIOGRAPHY 


220 

After these victories he was made Earl of Beaconsfield 
by, the queen. When his party was finally defeated at 
the polls, he resigned as prime minister and henceforth 
took little interest in public affairs. He employed his 
leisure in writing Endymiony another novel, tracing the 
career of a successful politician. After a short illness 
he died in i88i. There is no doubt that he felt his 
own career a success. His personal ambition was 
achieved when he, a member of a despised race, had 
placed himself at the head of the great English gov¬ 
ernment and had directed the course of her vast 
imperial enterprises. 


DAVID LIVINGSTONE 
1813-1873 


From the land of hills and lakes where grows the 
thistle dear to its countrymen, to that wild though 
gorgeous jungle in the midst of the darkest and most 
dangerous part of Africa, went a young Scotchman, 
voluntarily giving up the comforts and conveniences of 
civilization to risk his life among savage Negroes who 
had never looked on the face of a white man. 

David Livingstone, who was to accornplish this re¬ 
markable and courageous feat, spent his youth in a 
little known village on the river Clyde, Scotland. His 
family had no famous forbears and no ancestral tradi¬ 
tions but one — they were people of honesty. Such 
was the reputation of the Livingstones. Always bear¬ 
ing up the honored tradition of the family, David 
Livingstone fought his way to an education despite 
many obstacles. In him were blended the unusual char¬ 
acteristics of both scientist and churchman. His knowl¬ 
edge of science was by no means easily gained, for he 
studied at night school after working hard all day in 
a cotton factory. By pinching and saving at last he 
managed to get together enough money to attend Glas¬ 
gow University. 


221 


222 


BIOGRAPHY 


On becoming of age, the turning point arrived when 
Livingstone must decide on which of the many roads of 
life he would set out. Of a strong religious bent he 
was naturally attracted to the newly opened field of 
foreign missions. He applied to the London Mission¬ 
ary Society and studied for work in China. China had 
an enormous attraction for him, and the picture of mil¬ 
lions of people needing his help and attention urged 
him on. Then came a time when the first practical 
application of his studies was made. He was to give 
a sermon in a little town in Essex. The result of this 
attempt was pathetically amusing. Slowly he gave out 
his text to the handful of parishioners; then, looking at 
his audience he attempted to begin his carefully pre¬ 
pared sermon, but suddenly that same speech had re¬ 
treated into some remote recess of his brain and could 
not be recalled. After an embarrassing pause, he de¬ 
livered a sermon very different from the one he had 
planned. All that the church goers in that particular 
chapel got that morning was this: 

Friends, I have forgotten all I had to say,” and he 
left the pulpit. 

In spite of this rather bad beginning, Livingstone 
did gain the confidence of the London Missionary 
Society and was given a mission. 

General disturbances in China had made going to that 
country impossible, but the dark mystery of an unex¬ 
plored Africa appealed alike to his sympathies and 
imagination. Although lying almost in sight of Eu- 


DAVID LIVINGSTONE 


223 

rope, Africa remained until the nineteenth century the 
“ Dark Continent.” Its vast mountain ranges on the 
coast, the dangerous rapids in its rivers, its dense forests, 
and unhealthy climate had prevented the bravest from 
venturing into the interior. 

Livingstone, with his missionary zeal, his medical 
knowledge, and his keen interest in scientific explora¬ 
tion, found here a wonderful field for activity. 

Immediately when he reached Capetown, he struck 
northward, going through the territory that an earlier 
missionary. Dr. Moffat, had already opened up. Fol¬ 
lowing the maxim that when you are at Rome you must 
do as Rome does, he set out to learn the customs and 
speech of the natives, accomplishing his task so well 
that he succeeded in translating hymns into the native 
tongue. He laughed at this poetical attempt, but those 
same hymns were later adopted and printed by French 
missionaries. 

Living among the savage tribes brought with it many 
a breath-taking experience. Once a lion attacked him 
and so badly mangled his left shoulder that he was 
permanently crippled. During four years he remained 
behind the barrier of a desert working among the sav¬ 
ages. He had broken the loneliness of a bachelor’s 
life in the wilds by marrying Mary Moffat, Dr. 
Moffat’s daughter. The housekeeping those two man¬ 
aged to set up away from civilization was marvelous. 
Livingstone made all his own pots and pans, as well 
as everything else they needed, with a small hand forge 


224 


BIOGRAPHY 



David Livingstone 

he carried with him. Since during his stay in Africa 
he built three houses, one can easily imagine how he felt 
when he wrote to his sister Janet in this fashion: 

Oh, Janet, know thou if thou art given to building 
castles in the air, that that is easy work compared to 
building cottages on the ground.” 

With a group of faithful Negroes, Livingstone jour¬ 
neyed northward through the heart of the jungle. 
What he suffered there was far more than the endur- 




DAVID LIVINGSTONE 


225 

ance of most white men could stand. He had not only 
to contend with hostile tribes, but was in constant danger 
from attack by the wild animals of the jungles. Besides 
these hardships and many others, he found the Dutch 
inhabitants his bitter enemies. Because he had done his 
best to prevent the slave traffic that they had been 
practicing he became a marked man. They sacked and 
burned the village where he lived. They incited attacks 
by the natives. They hindered him at every turn. 

Disease did its worst to increase the trials and tribula¬ 
tions of this intrepid explorer. Fever racked him so 
that they just reached Loanda on the west coast of 
Africa in time to prevent his death. Livingstone was 
offered free passage on a boat to Capetown, likewise 
several other means of again reaching civilization, but 
he had promised to take his boys ” back to their home, 
and with him a promise was sacred. He gave up all the 
offers and journeyed back with his faithful followers, 
back into the land of hazards, consuming eleven months 
in reaching Linyanti, the place from which they had 
started. The Negroes in the region through which he 
passed had been so harassed and tortured by the Boers 
and the Portuguese that they were immediately on the 
defensive when Livingstone arrived, and he had to 
show his white skin to convince them that he was no 
Portuguese. 

Always going farther, he pushed up the Zambezi 
River until one day he heard the pounding of heavy 
waters, and, following up the sound, he found himself 


226 


BIOGRAPHY 


standing before one of Nature’s most stupendous beau¬ 
ties. The great mass of water was descending in a 
tremendous torrent over a high precipice. Here he 
indulged in what he called “ personal vanity,” naming 
these cataracts “ Victoria Falls ” in honor of his 
sovereign. 

Continuing his explorations he succeeded in crossing 
the entire continent from west to east — a great feat. 
As a result of this penetration into the heart of Africa, 
he was able to dispel the false idea that the interior was 
an uninhabited and sandy desert and to give a true pic¬ 
ture of its fertile lands, countless tribes, and mighty 
rivers. 

Twice during his African work he returned to Eng¬ 
land where fame awaited him, and he was overwhelmed 
with honors. The government, in gratitude for the 
land to which he gave it claim, showered gifts upon 
him. Under these changed conditions the temptation 
to remain in England was great j nevertheless back he 
went to his trusting natives who were overjoyed at his 
return. Much remained there for him yet to do, but 
tragedy after tragedy heaped up for him an almost 
unbearable burden of grief. His English friends in 
Africa — his father, his mother, a number of his un¬ 
fortunate natives, many of whom had been enslaved, 
and finally his wife, Mary Moffat — passed away. 
Dread and almost unavoidable disease had done their 
work. 

To add to this the Civil War broke out in America, 


DAVID LIVINGSTONE 


227 

and the policy of England caused his recall. With an 
agonized heart Livingstone watched and hoped for the 
liberation of the slaves, his own son fighting on the 
Federal side. When he was later sent to India his 
whole being cried out against the horrible torture that 
the slaves suffered, for the native leaders in India still 
enslaved their captives, although England had abol¬ 
ished slavery about 1830. At one place, he relates: 

We passed a woman tied by the neck to a tree and 
dead. The people of the county explained that she 
had been unable to keep up with the other slaves in a 
gang.” 

Not only did the Europeans kidnap the natives for 
their slave markets, but the natives themselves, fight¬ 
ing one tribe against the other, sold tjieir conquered 
enemies to the traders. Livingstone struggled to edu¬ 
cate the natives to give up this cruel practice just as 
earnestly as he condemned the white men who took 
advantage of their ignorance and savage state. 

He soon turned back to his Africa and was once 
again on unknown trails, hunting for the mysterious 
and elusive source of the Nile. He explored and re¬ 
explored Lake Nyassa in the hope that it would prove 
the birthplace of the ancient Egyptian river. Worn 
nearly to a skeleton, captured and robbed by Arabs, 
he at last reached Tanganyika, its true source. 

By this time the English government had completely 
lost track of him. For years there had been no word 
from Livingstone. Many believed that he had per- 


228 


BIOGRAPHY 


ished or was, perhaps, being held captive by a savage 
tribe. 

In 1871 the New York Herald sent Henry M. 
Stanley to find him. Stanley, born in Wales, but an 
American by adoption, had traveled as a newspaper 
correspondent in many lands. It is a wonder that he 
should ever have succeeded with such a wide, unknown 
land in which to search j but he did find him, and the 
meeting of the two has become famous through Stan¬ 
ley’s historic words of greeting, “ Dr. Livingstone, I 
presume? ” 

Livingstone, who was pale and weak from illness, 
had been left without supplies by marauding Arabs. 
When Stanley tried to persuade him to return to Eng¬ 
land, he gave him his diary by which many of the 
long-hidden mysteries of inland Africa were disclosed j 
but as for himself he heroically refused to leave. Two 
years later Stanley set out on an expedition, and con¬ 
tinuing Livingstone’s work explored vast areas in what 
was then considered darkest Africa. 

The terrible hardships Livingstone had undergone 
had so broken his health that he was no longer able 
even to ride his donkey. He soon reached the end of 
the trail, fighting until his last moments. Sadly his 
faithful Negro followers carried him to Loanda 
whence he was taken to England. 

His grateful motherland bestowed great honors, in¬ 
cluding burial in Westminster Abbey, on the man who 
had given his life so freely to her service. 


CECIL RHODES 
1853-1902 


As a college student at Oxford, Cecil Rhodes was 
making a splendid record in scholarship when he was 
threatened with serious illness and ordered to take a 
long sea voyage. In order to build up his health he 
decided to join his brother Herbert and live an out¬ 
door life on the frontiers of England’s flourishing 
possessions in South Africa. 

In the very year that he went to Natal, there oc¬ 
curred the first great diamond rush at Kimberley. His 
brother, fired by the reports of sudden wealth that 
came back from the great diamond fields, left his farm 
and persuaded Cecil to go with him to Kimberley. 
These two adventurous young men staked out a claim, 
and before he was twenty years of age Cecil had made 
a great fortune. His brother, unhappily, met death 
a few years later in a tragic accident. 

There were many others who became rich in this 
diamond rush, but Cecil Rhodes seemed to be followed 
by good luck at every turn. The story is told of a 
lunch party that he gave to some friends one day on 
the Vaal River. Rhodes was himself very fond of 
eating, and he always entertained in lavish style. The 
luncheon cost him the sum of £40, $200 in our money. 
After the feast was over, and he and his guests were 


229 


BIOGRAPHY 


230 

walking about, he leaned over and picked up from the 
pebbles at the river’s edge a diamond which he sold 
later in Kimberley for exactly £40. 

As Theodore Roosevelt gained physical strength on 
the plains of our West, so Cecil Rhodes found both 
health and prosperity in the frontier life of South 
Africa. When he was twenty-seven years old he re¬ 
turned to England to continue his interrupted studies 
at Oxford and receive his degree. He was at that 
time a tall, stalwart man, whose piercing, steel-blue 
eyes gave an indication of the inflexible will that was 
his most striking characteristic. There were some who 
thought he resembled in face and expression the Ro¬ 
man Csesars, and Rhodes himself did not object to 
being spoken of as The Emperor.” 

When Rhodes returned to Africa, after graduating 
from college, he continued the public life already 
started on his former stay, when he had been made 
a member of the House of Assembly at Cape Colony. 
Young Rhodes was a thorough-going Englishman. He 
not only believed in his country, but he believed 
the Anglo-Saxon people to be the greatest race on 
earth. At this time the imperialistic doctrines of Dis¬ 
raeli were rampant in South Africa. When England 
had first seized Cape Colony from the Dutch during 
the war with Napoleon, she had immediately insisted 
on the use of the English language there, and later 
abolished slavery, a custom to which the Dutch were 
much attached. Thousands of the Dutch inhabitants. 


CECIL RHODES 


231 

known as Boers, disliking these changes, had moved 
northward and established settlements, independent of 
English rule — the Orange Free State, Natal, and 
Transvaal. The English, however, found one excuse 
after another for annexing these new Dutch states, 
until by the time that Rhodes returned to Africa they 
had seized them all. 

The Disraeli doctrine of extending England’s pos¬ 
sessions never had a more ardent supporter than this 
energetic young man, Cecil Rhodes, with his wonder¬ 
ful powers of concentration and organizing ability. At 
this time, however, the power of Gladstone in the 
English government was so great that both the Trans¬ 
vaal and the Orange Free State were given almost 
complete independence. 

In the very next year gold was discovered in the 
Transvaal. Thousands of English adventurers, search¬ 
ing for immediate wealth, flocked into the Dutch Free 
States in much the same mad rush as happened in this 
country when gold was discovered in California. It 
was not many years before the English population far 
outnumbered the Dutch. Most of the latter were very 
little interested in digging gold. They were farmers 
and were perfectly satisfied to develop their lands and 
accumulate wealth more slowly with the plow. They 
looked upon the English miners as transients and re¬ 
fused to give them either the right to vote or to hold 
office in their little republics. 

Cecil Rhodes was by this time the most prominent 


BIOGRAPHY 


232 

man in South Africa. He was not only prime min¬ 
ister of Cape Colony, but was also president of the 
great British South African Company. Among the 
people he was familiarly known as “ The Old Man ” 
or “ The Chief.” He was both rich and influential, 
and with a natural tendency to rule others his word 
had become almost law. 

Rhodes had always cherished the idea of conquering 
these northern Dutch republics for England, and, be¬ 
sides, the British South Africa Company had large in¬ 
terests in mining lands and eagerly sought for the 
possession of additional territory. Rhodes, therefore, 
encouraged the English settlers in the Transvaal and 
the Orange Free State to revolt against the Dutch 
government under which they had been forced to live. 
Then, as president of the company, he ordered Dr. 
Jameson with fifteen hundred mounted police, em¬ 
ployed by the company, to go to the aid of the Eng¬ 
lish in their uprising against the Boers. This raid 
proved a great failure, for the Boers turned the tables 
on them, capturing and imprisoning the entire band 
before they had had time to unite their strength with 
that of the English miners in the Transvaal. Since 
this raid was unauthorized by the English government, 
Rhodes suffered for a time a great deal of criticism 
for taking such matters into his own hands. His ex¬ 
cuse and that of his friends is that what Rhodes did 
was always done more for the glory of England than 
for any private gain. 



CECIL RHODES 


233 

In the meantime Rhodes had been carrying out his 
policy of expansion in the lands north of the Trans¬ 
vaal, and, as head of the British South Africa Com¬ 
pany, he had been for years gradually buying a vast 
tract of land, penetrating deep into the interior of 
Central Africa. This land was held only after fierce 
struggles with savage tribes, which he gradually sub¬ 
dued and drove farther north until, by 1895, the coun¬ 
try was a fairly peaceful settlement. This great area, 
called Rhodesia, in honor of Rhodes, extends over one 
third the distance from Capetown to Cairo and is three 
and one half times as large as the British Isles. 

Rhodes’s cherished dream was the construction of 
a great transcontinental railroad from Cairo to Cape¬ 
town, every mile of which was to be built on English 
territory. Egypt had come under English control in 
1882 so that over two thousand miles could be con¬ 
structed in English lands directly from Cairo. In the 
central part of Africa, between Egypt and Rhodesia, 
lay two vast areas of land, one under the control of 
Belgium and the other a German possession. Since 
England, as a result of the World War, has fallen 
heir to the greater part of the German possessions in 
Africa, Rhodes’s vision of the Capetown to Cairo rail¬ 
road, every inch laid on English soil, may soon come 
true. 

Although Cecil Rhodes amassed great wealth, he 
always tried to use it for the common good. He looked 
upon his vast fortune as a means of carrying out his 


234 


BIOGRAPHY 



Copyright Underwood and Underwood 

Cecil Rhodes 


big enterprises and new ideas. One of his favorite hob¬ 
bies was farming, and he was devoted to the interest 
of the South African farmers. Many of them found 
their crops a failure, because methods of agriculture 
suitable for Western Europe would not succeed there* 








CECIL RHODES 


235 

For this reason he established an experimental farm 
on his own estate where he tried out various grains and 
vegetables in order to be able to give advice and assist¬ 
ance to the farmers in their crop raising. 

Cecil Rhodes was a natural leader. The natives of 
South Africa grew to look upon this powerful man as 
the chief of all the white men. In times of their 
uprisings, they would confer with him when they would 
probably have assassinated any other white man. 

When in Europe he was entertained by royalty, 
and his beautiful homes in South Africa were on oc¬ 
casions visited by members of the royal families. 
There was no fear in Rhodes for the titled monarchs 
of earth. At one time Rhodes had an interview with 
the German emperor. These two admired each other 
greatly. They had a long conversation, and then 
Rhodes got up and shook hands informally, saying, 
“ Well, good-by, Pve got to go now, as I have some 
people coming to dinner,” — entirely forgetting that 
court etiquette demanded that visitors did not leave 
until dismissed by the Kaiser. 

One of Rhodes’s homes was in Kimberley 5 the other 
was on an extensive ranch in the great spaces of Rho¬ 
desia. The latter was his favorite, for he loved nature 
and the wild life of the frontier. He was careless 
of his dress and always wore a soft slouch hat, cup¬ 
shaped like those of the Boer farmers, in spite of the 
fact that his valet ordered for him suits and hats by 
the dozen. His beautiful home in Rhodesia was open 


BIOGRAPHY 


236 

not only to his friends, but also to travelers who were 
visiting that country. It is said that nothing pleased 
him more than to have visiting strangers, in his absence, 
order luncheon to be prepared for them by his servants. 

Four years passed after the “Jameson raid,” and 
during this time the Boers in the Orange Free State 
and the Transvaal felt that the English were merely 
waiting for an excuse to take possession of their lands. 
In 1899, under the leadership of Paul Kruger, the 
president of the Transvaal, war was declared on Eng¬ 
land by these two small republics. By this time the 
English authorities had forgiven Rhodes for his part 
in instigating the “ Jameson raid ” and willingly made 
use of his services. During the Boer War he bravely 
helped in the defense of Kimberley against a Dutch 
attack, and his untiring efforts during the siege brought 
on a severe illness. The success of the Dutch against 
the English in battle after battle, for several years, 
was remarkable. Thousands of troops were sent to 
South Africa from Canada and Australia as well as 
from England, and even the genius of Lord Roberts, 
the English commandar-in-chief, was taxed before the 
two republics were finally defeated. The English 
government united these Dutch republics with Natal 
and Cape Colony into t le South African Union. Since 
that time the prosperity and comfort of the Dutch 
have been so great that they have become more than 
reconciled to the British empire. 

While Cecil Rhodes was realizing his dream of Eng- 


CECIL RHODES 


237 


lish domination in South Africa, another vision filled 
his thoughts. He believed that the future welfare of 
the world depended largely upon a union of all Eng¬ 
lish-speaking peoples. He wished to strengthen the 
friendly understanding between America and England. 
He also believed that the peace of the world demanded 
that cordial relations should be established with Ger¬ 
many. It was his idea that if young men from these 
countries could meet and exchange ideas during their 
college days, they would always in the future have 
common interests and would go back to their own coun¬ 
tries and spread this sympathy of understanding. The 
bulk of his great fortune, therefore, was left to estab¬ 
lish scholarships to be competed for by students from 
Great Britain, the United States, and Germany. He 
naturally selected Oxford as the center where these 
scholars were to meet. The United States received a 
very generous allowance of these scholarships. It is 
provided by his will that two students may be sent to 
Oxford from each state and territory, and that they 
shall receive each year for three years £300 to pay their 
expenses at that university. 

It was his wish that he be buried in his beloved 
Rhodesia. His grave was cut in the solid rocks on a 
high point of land which was his favorite “ View of 
the World,” as he called it, where he had often stood 
and gained inspiration from the wild grandeur of that 
endless sea of rugged, giant bowlders. 


FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 
1820-1910 

Over a hundred years ago there was born, in Italy, 
a little girl who was to become a torchbearer in the 
name of humanity.’^ Although she first opened her 
eyes in the beautiful city of Florence, she was an 
English child, and her parents, because she was born 
so far from her native land, thought they could find 
no better name for their little daughter than that of 
the fair city which was her birthplace. Thus Florence 
Nightingale was named. 

When Florence was still quite young, the family re¬ 
turned to their home in England, near Lea Hurst. It 
was here that Florence first showed her talent for the 
work to which she was to give her life. One day while 
driving in the country near by, she came upon an old 
shepherd whom she knew. Upon inquiry she learned 
that “ Cap,” his sheep dog, had been seriously hurt 
by some boys who had been throwing stones at him. 
Her sympathy and indignation both aroused, she went 
in search of the poor dog, who was suffering so from 
the cruel treatment he had received that the shepherd 
feared it would be necessary to kill him. Florence 
begged to be allowed to take “ Cap ” home and nurse 
him back to health. Her request was granted, and 
after several weeks the dog regained his strength and 
238 


FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 


239 

became devoted to his kind little nurse. Perhaps 
Florence did not realize then that “ Cap,” though only 
a dog, was the first of the many sufferers whom she 
was to comfort in later years. 

Full of initiative and ambition, Florence naturally 
became discontented with the easy, comfortable, un¬ 
eventful life at Lea Hurst. She finally decided to go 
abroad to study hospital and nursing conditions, for 
by this time she realized in what field she wished to 
work. She went first to Germany where she studied 
at the great hospital and training school at Kaiserworth. 
Realizing the urgent need of more institutions of that 
kind, she returned to England, fired with an ardent 
desire to establish a similar one there. 

The fates, however, determined otherwise; for in 
1854 England and France declared war against Russia, 
and it was in this great struggle, known as the Crimean 
War, that Florence Nightingale was to do her greatest 
work. Word came that the British Army was suffer¬ 
ing greatly from want of proper medical care and from 
unsanitary conditions. The English nurses, like those 
in most other countries, were coarse, uneducated, un¬ 
trained women, for it was considered highly improper 
for any refined woman to be a nurse. A desperate call 
for help came, and Florence Nightingale sent word to 
the war office, Here am I; send me! ” Her generous 
offer was eagerly accepted, for the greatest need lay for 
a refined, cultured, trained woman to take the lead. 
Her family and friends were at first greatly shocked. 



240 


BIOGRAPHY 


Crimean War 


Edwin H. Landseer 


for women had never before gone to hospitals at the 
“ front.” 

We, who live in this time when women’s opportuni¬ 
ties have greatly increased, find it hard to realize what 
a true pioneer she was. She and thirty-eight of the 
best nurses she could secure, known as the “ Angel 
Band,” arrived in Crimea in the hour of the greatest 
need, the day before the terrific battle of Inkerman. 
This battle, though an English victory, was won at a 
dear cost, and the task of caring for the wounded fell 
to Miss Nightingale and her Angel Band.” She 
found conditions indescribably terrible, but under her 




FLORENCE- NIGHTINGALE 


241 

expert leadership they improved rapidly, and the 
death-rate which had been forty-two per cent when she 
arrived soon fell to two per cent. It was her custom 
to pass through all of the wards each night to see that 
everything was in the best condition possible. In her 
hand she always carried a little lamp, and thus she 
became known and loved by all as the lady with the 
lamp.” 

All this was not accomplished, however, without ex¬ 
treme hard work and effort on her part, and, weakened 
from overwork, she was stricken with the worst form 
of Crimean fever. The hut in which she lay ill was 
in danger of attack by the Russians j but when they 
learned of her whereabouts, they refused to continue 
their attack in that direction, for it was well known that 
she gave aid and comfort alike to friend or foe. For 
a time the doctors feared for her life, but, the crisis 
safely passed, she recovered rapidly. 

Peace was declared in 1856, but Miss Nightingale 
remained at her post until the last wounded man had 
been dismissed and her work finished. Before she 
left for home, she had a monument erected at her 
own expense in memory of the soldiers and nurses 
who had perished during the war. Her extreme mod¬ 
esty led her to refuse the offer of the English govern¬ 
ment of a “ man-of-war ” as a mark of honor to bring 
her home. She returned to England in an ordinary 
ship and succeeded in reaching her home unrecognized 
by the throngs which had gathered to greet her. 



Copyright Unaerwooa and Underwood «*. 

Florence Nightingale Seated on Piazza in Scutari. Beyond f 
THE Straits Lies Constantinople. 



FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 


243 

After the return of Miss Nightingale to England, 
she received a very cordial letter from Queen Victoria 
containing an urgent, invitation to visit her. Miss 
Nightingale accepted this invitation and spent some 
time with the royal family at Balmoral where she 
secured a much needed rest. 

At a large dinner in honor of the army and naval 
officers who had returned safely from Crimea, slips of 
paper were passed out on which each man was asked to 
write the name of the person whose services during 
the recent war would be the longest remembered. 
Every slip without one exception had written upon 
it the two words, “ Florence Nightingale.” This 
is a most significant fact because it showed that not 
only the privates, who for the most part were the ones 
in contact with Florence Nightingale, but also the-of¬ 
ficers realized the great service that she had rendere4. 

Though Miss Nightingale is best known for her 
wonderful work during the Crimean War, she did not 
retire to a peaceful, uneventful life after her return 
to England. She was a great executive and a fine 
organizer and she went to work to wage her campaign 
for more devoted, skilled, and refined nurses of which 
her experience in Crimea had shown her the great need. 
Indeed it may be said that Florence Nightingale raised 
nursing from a trade to a profession. 

With unflagging spirit, she went to work in the War 
Office in London and rendered great service to the 
English army in India. She worked most enthusi- 


BIOGRAPHY 


244 

astically on the famous “ Report of the Indian Sanitary 
Commission.” But her labors had told upon her, and 
she had really been an invalid ever since she had re¬ 
turned from Crimea. 

At length she was confined to her bedj but still 
her labors for better hospital conditions both at home 
and abroad continued, and many plans and much good 
advice came from her sick room. It was only by her 
great will power and her devotion to her cause that 
she was able to carry on her wonderful work during 
this time. 

Although she was mainly connected with the work 
in India, Miss Nightingale also had a great influence 
in army affairs at home. She acted as a sort of ad¬ 
visory council to the War Office and enjoyed many 
privileges because she was regarded as the first expert 
on many of the questions with which the office was at 
that time troubled. All regulations for military hos¬ 
pitals and nursing staffs were submitted to Miss Night¬ 
ingale for approval, suggestions, or corrections. 

Once when the War Office asked for her criticism of 
some cavalry barracks, she made a plea for “ a window 
in each stall for the horses to look out of.” There 
spoke the same warm heart that had rescued “ Cap ” 
many years before. 

The conditions which Miss Nightingale saw and re¬ 
formed during the Crimean War were almost par¬ 
alleled by the conditions which existed in the regular 
hospitals at home. In 1867 some reform legislation 



FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 


David Law 

Balmoral Castle Where Florence Nightingale Visited Queen 
Victoria 

was passed which greatly improved this terrible state 
of aifairsj and it was Florence Nightingale’s influence 
which brought about this helpful legislation. It was 
a memorable day indeed in the nursing history of 
England when, on May i6, 1865, the Nightingale 
Training School for nurses was opened — a monument 
to the vision and labors of Florence Nightingale! 

Florence Nightingale, although she was called an 
“ administering angel ” by her devoted patients, was 
by no means a plaster saint.” She was not given 
to flattery and not quick to forgive a mistake. She 
realized that to do good work one must have not only 
a soft heart but also a hard head. She was to a certain 
extent unable to tolerate the views of others if they 



BIOGRAPHY 


246 

did not coincide with her own, and she disliked to be 
dependent upon or opposed by any one. These sterner 
qualities, however, are far overshadowed by her pity, 
sympathy, skill, and her passionate desire to serve 
others. She was as clever and witty as she was sympa¬ 
thetic, and she brought about many reforms by match¬ 
ing her wit with those in control. 

Florence Nightingale believed that men and women 
were in this world to work for the betterment of the 
human race, and it is clearly seen that throughout her 
life her motto was “ Service.” 

The government was not unmindful or unappreci¬ 
ative of the long years of service which Florence 
Nightingale had rendered her country. Accordingly, 
on May 12, 1904, in celebration of her eighty-fourth, 
birthday, she received the honor of “ Lady of Grace 
of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.” She is, up 
to the present time, the only woman to have been 
awarded this high and rare distinction. 

When Miss Nightingale died several months after 
her ninetieth birthday, it was the wish of the entire 
nation to bestow one last honor upon this great woman, 
that of burying her in Westminster Abbey, the resting 
place of England’s “ great.” This tribute, however, 
could not be paid, because of a previously expressed 
desire of Miss Nightingale’s to be laid to rest in the 
quiet village churchyard near her childhood home. 
Her wishes were carried out in great reverence, and 
in 1916 a statue in her memory was unveiled by Queen 
Mary. 


FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 


247 

The eventful outcome of her labors is the great Red 
Cross organization which played so important a part in 
the World War and whose work is a vast far-reaching 
expression of Florence Nightingale’s motto, “ Service.” 

It can be said of her that she was “ one whose life 
makes a great difference for all. All are better off than 
if she had not lived, and this betterness is for always j 
it did not die with her.” That is the true estimate of 
a great life. Longfellow says of her: 

“ A lady with a lamp shall stand 
In the great history of the land 
A noble type of good. 

Heroic Womanhood.” 


EDWARD JENNER 
1749-1823 

LOUIS PASTEUR 
1822-1895 

Among the events of importance in this age of re¬ 
form and revolution there is perhaps none that has had 
more influence on life than the rise of modern science. 
It has not only increased, man’s knowledge of himself, 
of animals, plants, minerals, and gases, but has enabled 
him to some extent to control nature so that his own 
lot has been greatly improved. The future of science 
holds out unlimited possibilities for the further de¬ 
velopment of man’s powers and resources. The con¬ 
quest of nature as fought out in the laboratories of the 
scientists is as thrilling a story as that of famous battle¬ 
fields of war. 

Man has always possessed a “ noble curiosity.” The 
ancient Egyptians and Greeks gave much thought to 
the world about them. But it was not until the inven¬ 
tion of scientific instruments like the microscope and 
the telescope that great strides could be made in sci¬ 
ence. In the early eighteenth century people still be¬ 
lieved that sickness was due to the presence of devils 
or was the punishment inflicted by providence for evil 
deeds. 

In ancient times malaria destroyed the strength of 
248 


EDWARD JENNER AND LOUIS PASTEUR 249 

great nations, for those who did not die remained a 
weakened people. All through the Middle Ages, 
dread scourges like the bubonic plague, smallpox, and 
cholera killed off thousands. Yellow fever, until a 
generation ago, wiped out whole cities. For centuries 
the most dreaded disease of Europe had been smallpox. 
This was a loathsome disease which every one expected 
to have. It claimed a Louis XV of France as well as 
the humblest peasant, and those who did not die were 
usually disfigured for life. 

When Edward Jenner was a boy, physicians believed 
that every one should prepare himself for smallpox, 
and then catch it intentionally. The preparation con¬ 
sisted of dieting and blood-letting. It was thought 
that the attack under these conditions would be mild. 
George Washington took the smallpox in this way. 
When Edward Jenner was eight years old he. was a 
fine ruddy boy 3 but after being prepared for small¬ 
pox until he was “ emaciated and feeble ” and then 
having the disease, he did not recover his former health 
for many years. After that terrible experience he 
made up his mind to devote his life to the task of 
fighting this dread disease, and did all in his power to 
prepare himself for this noble work. 

He obtained the best medical training offered in 
England, and then he returned to Berkeley, where he 
was very successful both in general practice and in 
surgery. 

Dr. Jenner, who was a very close observer, noticed 


BIOGRAPHY 


250 

that peasants who caught cowpox from milking the cows 
were never subject afterward to smallpox. Cowpox 
was a very mild disease and was communicated to the 
peasants only when they milked with hands that were 
scratched. 

He determined to make some experiments and 
selected for his first case a healthy boy about eight years 
old, named Phipps. The boy was inoculated with cow- 
pox, was slightly indisposed for a week, and at the end 
of that time was perfectly well. Later, in order to be 
sure that he was secure frbm the contagion of smallpox, 
Jenner inoculated him with smallpox itself, and no 
disease followed. In writing up the case Dr. Jenner 
said he felt it unnecessary to produce further testimony, 
“ That the cowpox protects the human constitution from 
the smallpox.” 

It is interesting to know that when young Phipps 
married years later. Dr. Jenner presented him and his 
bride with a new and comfortable cottage. 

Dr. Jenner continued his experiments, collecting 
serum from the cattle and injecting it into the blood 
of many people around Berkeley — with the invariable 
result that none of them ever contracted smallpox. 

In 1798 Dr. Jenner published his discovery to the 
world, and by 1800 it was widely practiced throughout 
Europe and America. By 1802 smallpox was a disease 
thoroughly in control throughout England, and parlia¬ 
ment in that year voted Dr. Jenner £10,000 for what 
he had done to promote human welfare. 


EDWARD JENNER AND LOUIS PASTEUR 251 

The Emperor Napoleon in speaking of Jenner said, 
What that man asks is never to be refused.’’ The 
emperor of Russia while talking to Dr. Jenner said, 
“ How pleasant must be your feelings when you con¬ 
template the services you have rendered mankind. To 
the world, sir,” he added with great emphasis. 

Although Jenner had discovered how to save people 
from smallpox by the use of the serum from cowpox, 
he had no knowledge of the real cause of the disease. 
He did not know that he was really dealing with mi¬ 
nute living organisms. 

Years ago, when this world was young and when 
man fought his enemies with clubs and stones, his most 
dangerous foes were the large animals of the forests. 
Lions, tigers, leopards, and many other wild beasts had 
no fear of man, and they were always ready to pounce 
upon him and devour him. Mankind, however, learned 
to use the bow and arrow and later firearms, so that the 
great animals of the forest came to fear him and found 
their only means of self-preservation was to retreat into 
the depths of the forests. Even here they have great 
fear of man and slink away at his approach. 

It was a great Frenchman named Louis Pasteur, born 
in 1822, who proved to the world that although danger 
from the great animals of the forest has gone, there re¬ 
mains with us a far greater danger from millions and 
millions of small animals and plants which are con¬ 
stantly with us. The tiny plants are called bacteria and 
grow by dividing into two parts. The danger from the 


BIOGRAPHY 


252 

presence of bacteria in the human body is due to their 
rapid multiplication. It has been calculated that one 
of these minute plants under proper condition could 
in five days form a mass that would fill all the earth’s 
oceans to the depth of one mile. They are everywhere 
— in the air, in water, in milk, and in the bodies of man 
and animals. They are so small that they cannot be 
seen without the aid of powerful microscopes. There 
are also many kinds of minute animal organisms. 
Many of these forms of life are not dangerous to 
healthy in fact they are necessary to it. Others, how¬ 
ever, are most harmful, and some are so dangerous 
that if they once get started feeding on the tissue of 
our bodies, death is certain. 

This germ-theory of disease, like many other the¬ 
ories, had been thought of long before, but it was 
never proved until Pasteur made his experiments. 

Louis Pasteur, chosen by popular vote of the French 
as the greatest Frenchman that ever lived, was not born 
of an aristocratic family, nor was he brought up in 
poverty. His father was a tanner. Little did he and 
his wife realize that their small home in Arbois would 
some day be dedicated to the memory of their son, and 
that sightseers would come to read the plaque which 
was placed over the door and bore the inscription, 
“ Here was born Louis Pasteur, December 27, 1822.” 

His parents, determined to make their son an edu¬ 
cated man, made great sacrifices in order to give him a 
college training in chemistry, a subject in which he was 



Pasteur in His Laboratory 

Taken from Lumet “ Pasteur,” Librairie Hachette, Editeur. 










BIOGRAPHY 


254 

much interested. As a college student, Pasteur, who 
really wanted to learn and insisted on understanding 
everything clearly, worried his poor old professor by 
continually asking questions. The professor, who 
taught by the old-fashioned method of having his stu¬ 
dents memorize answers from the book, finally told 
Pasteur to hold his tongue. He added that it was not 
the teacher’s place to be questioned, but that it was his 
business to do the questioning. Pasteur, not satisfied 
with this method of teaching, hunted out a learned 
chemist in the town who gladly gave him some addi¬ 
tional lessons. 

His college days were not days of luxury. Pasteur, 
with two student friends, lived in a stone-paved room 
that was cold in winter and hot in summer. He tells 
us that he hired a stove for eight francs, but could only 
use it on two occasions because he could not afford to 
buy wood. He did succeed in getting together enough 
money to buy a cover for his table, which was so full 
of cracks and holes that he could not write on it. 

When he was twenty-six years of age he became 
professor in the college of Dijon, and a year later he 
was appointed to the chair of chemistry in the college 
of Strassburg. 

It was at this time that he fell in love with one of the 
rector’s daughters. In a letter to her he wrote: “ All 
I possess is good health, a good heart, and my position 
in the University. There is nothing in me to attract 
a girl, but memory tells me that when people have 


EDWARD JENNER AND LOUIS PASTEUR 255 

known me well they have liked me. Time will show 
you that under this shy and cold exterior there is a 
heart full of affection for you.” The proposal was 
accepted, and they were married in 1849. It was said 
that Pasteur was so absorbed in his work that some one 
had to go to his laboratory and remind him that it was 
his wedding day. His wife, Marie, proved a most 
devoted companion, although her husband was gen¬ 
erally so intent on his researches that he forgot all 
appointments and never thought of his meals. Mad¬ 
ame Pasteur sometimes scolded him for working so 
hard and so long, but he always replied by telling her 
that he was doing it to make amame for her. 

W^hen Pasteur was made professor of chemistry at 
the Sorbonne, he carried on a careful study of the prod¬ 
ucts of France, such as wine and silk. He discovered 
that the fermentation of the wine was caused by minute 
living organisms that were not harmful to health. On 
searching for the reason for the failure of the silk worm 
in producing a good cocoon, he found that the cause 
Was a disease and that the silk worm was being attacked 
by millions of germs. From this discovery he was led 
to believe that many diseases of man are caused in the 
same way and that the great task of physicians in the 
future was to learn how to fight these invaders. 

The applications of this great discovery of Pasteur 
are endless in number. The Pasteur treatment of hy¬ 
drophobia, a disease which had a death-rate of one 
hundred per cent, is now completely successful as a 



Statue in Front of Pasteur Institute 

Representing Jean Baptiste Jupille, one of the earliest subjects treated 
by Pasteur, in a life and death struggle with a mad dog. 

Taken from Lumet “Pasteur,” Librairie Hachette, Editeur. 




EDWARD JENNER AND LOUIS PASTEUR 257 

life-saving measure. The Pasteurization of milk has 
saved the lives of thousands of babies. The vast in¬ 
dustry of canning is based on Pasteur’s idea of killing 
the germs that cause decay. His discovery revolution¬ 
ized surgery, for it taught surgeons the necessity of 
sterilizing all their instruments very carefully. This 
greatly reduced the danger from blood poison which 
had, up to this time, made many operations fatal. 

From Pasteur’s time to the present, physicians work¬ 
ing on the principle of the germ-theory of disease have 
discovered that many of the most terrible diseases af¬ 
flicting mankind, such as pneumonia, diphtheria, cholera, 
typhoid, etc., are due to the presence of germs, and they 
have learned how to combat them. In the treatment of 
many of these diseases antitoxins are being used to 
counteract the ill effects of the presence in the blood of 
these tiny organisms. 

It is thus that these small but countless enemies of 
mankind are being hunted down, and means of warding 
them off or rendering our bodies able to withstand their 
attacks are being practiced. It is predicted that tuber¬ 
culosis, which has been reduced fifty per cent, will soon 
be a disease of the past among civilized people. Able 
physicians believe that the time will come when the 
dreaded cancer will be unknown. 

A wonderful benefactor to mankind was Pasteur. 
He could with great appropriateness make his toast to 
the world: “Health and happiness to all! ” 


ALBERT I, KING OF THE BELGIANS 
1875 - 


Albert I is often spoken of as the brave king of a 
brave people. Fortissimi sunt Belgcey^ said Cassar, 
in his accounts of his famous wars nearly two thou¬ 
sand years ago. And the ancient house of Coburg, 
from which comes the present Belgian ruler, gained 
its first fighting fame by the war which it waged 
against Attila and his Huns in the great Thuringian 
Forest during the Middle Ages. The present king of 
the Belgians has not failed to do his part to sustain 
the record of the historic bravery of the Belgians. 

Albert I was extremely fortunate in his early life 
and home surroundings. His father, the Count of 
Flanders, second son of King Leopold I, was a soldier, 
a lover of art and books, and an ardent patriot. Al¬ 
bert’s mother not only loved music and literature, but 
was herself a painter of considerable talent. Albert, 
the fifth child of his parents, was born in April, 1875. 

From the first these devoted parents gave at least 
two hours each day to the education of their children. 
Beaudoin, the oldest prince, died in 1883, leaving 
Albert heir to the throne. As Albert’s parents enter¬ 
tained a great deal, he and his sisters had many chances 
to meet interesting and famous people. Their sum¬ 
mers were spent at Les Amerois, a beautiful country 
258 


KING ALBERT OF BELGIUM 


259 

home, where every one was welcome. There were 
lovely gardens, and the mansion itself contained many 
artistic features, among them the famous monumen¬ 
tal staircase from the Paris exhibition of 1878. Here 
on the green lawns, under great shade trees, parties 
were held, presents were distributed to all, and the 
children and grandchildren of European royalty 
romped and played together. 

Like all continental princes, Albert was destined to 
be in the army. It was as a future heir to the Belgian 
throne that he entered the Government Military 
School near Brussels. He was even then a tall, lanky, 
almost ungainly youth, always ready to blush, and with 
such a shy and hesitating air that people sometimes 
failed to see the real force that lay underneath. Al¬ 
bert’s schoolmates were chiefly from the middle class, 
fine, manly boys, but entirely ignorant of court life, 
or of the polished manners of the upper classes. At 
first, abashed in the presence of a prince, they avoided 
him. Later, when they knew him better, they in¬ 
flicted upon him much good-natured ragging.” Al¬ 
bert was not allowed to sleep at the school as the other 
boys did, but was taken home every night. In all other 
respects, however, he followed the same general rou¬ 
tine. He wore the same uniform, shared meals with 
them, had the same amount of pocket money, and 
was obliged, according to the rule of the school, to 
salute all commissioned and non-commissioned officers. 

As Albert grew to manhood and realized the re- 


26 o 


BIOGRAPHY 


sponsibilities that would come to him as king, he felt 
that there was much that he should know that he had 
not yet learned at school. With great conscientious¬ 
ness he set himself to study military science and di¬ 
plomacy, choosing for instructors the finest men in the 
country. 

In order to round out his education he traveled ex¬ 
tensively. When he was twenty-four years of age he 
visited the United States. Those who saw him at that 
time say that he was as simple in his manner as a 
plain citizen -— “a kindly and gentle young man with 
an intense eagerness to learn.” While in this country, 
he studied our railroad systems, visited the great cloth 
factories in Massachusetts, and went himself down 
into the coal mines of Pennsylvania. He wanted Bel¬ 
gium, a great industrial country, to profit by every¬ 
thing that America could teach him. 

On his return from America Albert made a similar 
visit to Germany to study the latest industrial develop¬ 
ments there. Here he met the Princess Elizabeth of 
Bavaria whom he later married. It was an ideal mar¬ 
riage because it not only united the future ruler of 
Belgium with a princess of the most noble blood in 
Bavaria, but it was also a real love match. The mar¬ 
riage ceremony was celebrated at Munich with din¬ 
ners, concerts, and fetes of all kinds. An equally gay 
and splendid reception awaited the young couple on 
their return to Brussels. 

As heir to the throne Albert had a seat in the senate. 


KING ALBERT OF BELGIUM 


261 

and in 1908 he made his first public speech. It was a 
subject that was very dear to his heart and upon which 
he had spent much time and study. He mapped out 
before the senate a plan for the further development 
of Belgian shipping, participation of Belgium in the 
Congress of International Law, and extension of Bel¬ 
gium’s part in the world trade. During the summer 
of 1909 he made an important trip to Belgium’s vast 
territory in Africa, known as the Congo. On this trip 
he made a study of the valuable trade and agricultural 
prospects of these African possessions. He also saw 
for himself some of the abuses prevalent there in the 
treatment of the natives, and he determined to make 
conditions better. 

When Albert came to the throne in 1909 at the death 
of his grandfather Leopold I, his father having died 
four years before, he dismissed the entire government 
of his predecessor, not because he entirely disagreed 
with his policies, but because he wanted to make a fresh 
start. He surrounded himself with men of somewhat 
more liberal and progressive ideas. 

Albert’s first efforts as king were directed toward 
improving the condition of his own countrymen. Aid 
was extended to the fishermen to prevent their suffer¬ 
ing during bad seasons, and large sums of money were 
advanced to peasants who wished to purchase the farms 
they worked upon. Then, as now, his main interests 
were to aid Belgian industry, to improve her factories 
and farm lands, her mines, and her fishing industries. 



Copyright Underwood and Underwood 

King Albert of Belgium 




KING ALBERT OF BELGIUM 263 

Albert has always had a great sympathy for fisher- 
folk. He loves the sea and has a summer home at 
Ostend. All along the shores beyond the fashionable 
resort are the picturesque homes of the Belgian fisher¬ 
men. King Albert loves to mix with these simple folk 
and hear from their own lips the stories of their ex¬ 
periences. This coast is so beautiful that it has at¬ 
tracted scores of artists who have built cabins on the 
dunes. With these, too, Albert often talks, for he, 
like his father and mother, is the friend of artists and 
writers and encourages them at every opportunity. 
There is a great love in Belgium among all classes of 
people for this tall, kindly, and democratic sovereign. 

A year after Albert ascended the throne a vast uni¬ 
versal exhibition was opened at Brussels. Neither 
labor nor money had been spared to make this great 
enterprise a success. To it all the important nations 
of the world sent exhibits. Just as things were near¬ 
ing completion, a disastrous fire broke out and a large 
part of the exhibition was destroyed. Nothing daunted, 
Albert ordered hasty repairs to be made, and the Brus¬ 
sels Exhibition opened brilliantly with speeches made 
by notable people from all parts of the globe. Albert 
was not satisfied merely to preside at this opening. He 
took a personal interest in every day’s proceedings 
throughout the several months of its duration. Ac¬ 
companied by the queen, he insisted on visiting every 
stand, examining every exhibit and asking for explana¬ 
tion of every new idea or invention. 


BIOGRAPHY 


264 

It is said that King Albert did not ascend the throne 
alone j his family ascended it with him» Queen Eliza¬ 
beth, whose genuine charity and friendly sympathy 
won an immediate place for her in the hearts of the 
Belgians, is always at the king’s side. There is cer¬ 
tainly no happier picture of royal family life than 
that which we have of King Albert and Queen Eliza¬ 
beth and their three children in the peaceful days 
before the outbreak of the World War. 

As king of the Belgians one of the first state visits 
Albert made was to Berlin in 1910. This visit was 
marked by the usual splendor of parades, receptions, 
and dinners. In the absence of the emperor, who was 
ill at the time, the honors were done by the crown 
prince. Assurances of friendly sentiments were ex¬ 
changed, and the intention to guard Belgium’s neu¬ 
trality was reaffirmed. A few months later, Kaiser 
William II paid King Albert the compliment of a 
return visit. Albert and the Belgians gave the kaiser 
a royal welcome, and entertained him with every pos¬ 
sible courtesy. At that very time German workmen 
were busily constructing railroad sidings close to the 
Belgian boundaries, and it was less than two years later 
that German troops were backed up to Belgium’s bor¬ 
ders unloading hundreds of thousands of soldiers who 
were to swarm over the land and devastate it. 

Events in Europe moved rapidly to a crisis. The 
heir to the throne of Austria had been murdered. 
Austria declared war upon Serbia. Russian troops 


KING ALBERT OF BELGIUM 265 

mobilized against Austria, and Germany had declared 
war first on Russia, and then on Russia’s ally, France. 
The easiest way to enter France was through Belgium. 
But Germany had signed a treaty with France and Eng¬ 
land that Belgium should be held as strictly neutral 
territory. 

At five o’clock on the second day of August, 1914, 
King Albert received an ultimatum from Germany 
giving him twelve hours, from seven p.m. to seven 
A.M., to decide whether German troops would be al¬ 
lowed to pass through Belgium on their way to France. 
Germany promised that the country would be un¬ 
harmed if her soldiers were allowed to pass. But if 
the Belgians refused free passage, they would be 
treated like enemies. What was King Albert to do? 
Should he break his promise of remaining neutral by 
granting the kaiser’s demand, and thus save his coun¬ 
try from war? There were some among the Belgians 
who would have been willing to do this — though not 
many. But not the king. Monday, August 4, he sent 
back to the kaiser a firm and dignified refusal. Bel¬ 
gium would not break her pledge. She would resist 
the invaders. 

Two days later, German troops were crossing the 
Belgian frontier, and Albert was on the way to take 
command of his army. From Liege to Namur to 
Belgium’s western boundary King Albert’s brave 
soldiers, gallantly fighting, were slowly driven back, 
leaving a ruined and suffering country behind them. 


266 


BIOGRAPHY 


They could not stem the tide, but they checked it long 
enough to save France. When the Germans were 
pressing King Albert hard, his ministers urged him 
again and again to seek safety in England. The king’s 
reply was always: “ My place is with my soldiers.” 
Forced out of his own country into France, he took 
his place side by side with the Allies. And while Al¬ 
bert was fighting. Queen Elizabeth was working in the 
hospitals and personally supervising the work of the 
Red Cross. 

When victory came and Albert returned to his 
country, he found cathedrals wrecked, cities laid waste, 
and suffering everywhere. In spite of this, there was 
great rejoicing on the day King Albert reentered 
Brussels, for Belgium had kept her pledge and won 
a great name for bravery. The city was gayly deco¬ 
rated j Albert reviewed his troops, and the crowds 
cheered and wept at the sight of their beloved king. 
Albert rode down between the cheering lines, his usually 
calm and noble face worn with the strain and sadness 
of the awful struggle. 

A great Belgian writer, Maeterlinck, said of King 
Albert: 

Of all the heroes of this stupendous struggle, 
heroes who will live in the memory of man, one as¬ 
suredly of the most unsullied, one of those whom we 
can never love enough, is the great young king of my 
little country. He was indeed, at the critical hour, the 
appointed man for whom every heart was waiting.” 


GEORGES CLEMENCEAU 
1841 - 


When Georges Clemenceau, the great French 
statesman of the World War, was a little boy, growing 
up in a small village in southern France, there were 
tottering old men alive who used to sit around and 
tell stories of the days when they fought under the 
great Napoleon Bonaparte. Georges’ father, a land- 
owner and country doctor, was an ardent lover of 
freedom, and a sturdy defender of the French republic 
in all the ups and downs it experienced from the time 
of its first establishment. 

One of Georges’ earliest recollections was the wild 
and happy excitement of his father at the restoration 
of the republic in 1848 when Louis Philippe abdi¬ 
cated and Louis Napoleon was made president of the 
new republic. That happiness was short-lived, for in 
1851, when Louis Napoleon made himself Emperor 
Napoleon III, Georges’ father and other zealous 
lovers of the republic were put into jail. The older 
Clemenceau, who hated all kings and emperors, re¬ 
turned home full of bitterness at the downfall of the 
republic. But he kept alive in his own heart, and in¬ 
spired in the heart of his son, the fierce hope of one 
day seding the republic again restored. 

267 


268 


BIOGRAPHY 


Georges seems to have been a chip of the old block. 
He inherited his father’s passion for freedom, he 
shared his love of art and literature, and he even 
adopted his profession. When he left his village home 
to study medicine at Paris, he was physically as sturdy 
and full of energy as outdoor life and country air could 
make him, mentally keen and alert, and fired with 
democratic ideals of free speech and free press. Those 
were dangerous ideals at that time. When young Cle- 
menceau entered the Paris Hospital as a medical student, 
Napoleon III, who was now exercising almost des¬ 
potic power in France, issued a decree that no periodical 
or newspaper treating of political life or social ques¬ 
tions could be published except by permission of the 
government. This did not at all discourage Clemen- 
ceau, who found time from his duties at the hospital 
to do much writing for the radical papers, and early 
joined one of the many republican clubs rapidly spring¬ 
ing up in opposition to the rule of Napoleon III. One 
day he startled the emperor by shouting under his 
august nose, “ Vive la republique! ” He was immedi¬ 
ately seized and put into prison. Three years later, 
when he had taken his doctor’s degree, he decided 
that France was no place for an ambitious young re^ 
publican to nourish his plans, and started off to spend 
a few years in travel and study of other countries. His 
prison experience had by no means weakened his cour¬ 
age, for, throughout a long and stormy existence, 
“ popular or unpopular,” he spoke the truth. 


GEORGES CLEMENCEAU 269 

Shortly after the close of our Civil War, Cle- 
menceau visited the United States, and for a time was 
professor of French in a young ladies’ boarding school 
at Stamford, Connecticut, a short distance from New 
York City. The young French doctor was a splendid 
horseman, and often accompanied the young ladies of 
the school on their riding trips about the beautiful 
Connecticut hills. On these rides Clemenceau fell in 
love with one of the young girls. Unfortunately her 
aunt and uncle were very strict and would not hear of 
the marriage of their young niece with ’ this slender 
young man with aggressive jaw and deep-set, flashing 
eyes. A month’s separation strengthened their affec¬ 
tion, and in desperation they eloped. The marriage so 
happily begun was not a successful one, and was ended 
some years later by divorce. 

During the period of his exile over here Clemenceau 
was following closely the struggle in France between 
the monarchists and the republicans. The old empire 
was crumbling, and Napoleon III was rapidly losing 
the support of the people. One thing, among others, 
that brought ridicule and scorn upon his head was his 
foolish attempt to interfere in Mexico just at the close 
of our Civil War. He thought that the unsettled con¬ 
dition in Mexico offered a splendid opportunity for 
him to set up an empire under his protection. He con- • 
spired with some of the Mexicans who wanted to over¬ 
throw the republic, and in 1864 sent over Maximilian, 
Archduke of Austria, to rule as emperor of Mexico. 


BIOGRAPHY 


270 

When Napoleon III found that the United States was 
ready to go to war to uphold the Monroe Doctrine, he 
speedily withdrew. He had no desire to meet so 
powerful an enemy. 

It was not long after this unfortunate episode that 
Napoleon III was overwhelmingly defeated at Sedan 
and fled to England. 

After this crushing blow by the Germans, the gov¬ 
ernment of France had to be reestablished under most 
trying circumstances. In the battle for the restora¬ 
tion of the republic, Clemenceau, who had returned to 
France, was fighting in the front ranks. France was 
again declared a republic and has remained so to this 
day. 

Clemenceau, now thirty years old, was chosen mayor 
of Montmartre (a part of Paris). In the siege of 
Paris that followed, Clemenceau was almost a dictator. 
He raised a new republican army, drilled recruits, 
organized and supervised all local affairs, and won the 
lasting devotion of the people of that section of the 
city. 

At the close of the war they sent him to represent 
them in the National Assembly, which had been forced 
to retire to Bordeaux on the coming of the Germans 
to Paris and Versailles. 

After a brief service as assemblyman, he devoted 
himself for four years to his profession as a doctor, 
working among his own people in Montmartre, and 
doing much service for the poor people free of charge. 


GEORGES CLEMENCEAU 


271 

When he was again elected to the Assembly in 1876 
he had so won the esteem and love of the people of 
Paris that they were solidly behind him. Though 
never a socialist, he recognized the hardships the work¬ 
ing people had to suffer, and throughout his long years 
of service in the French parliament he labored to pass 
laws for their safety and comfort. His watchwords 
were “ fair play ” and “ freedom for all.” On all 
political questions he took a democratic stand. He be¬ 
lieved in religious toleration and universal education. 

In matters of foreign policy he was a man of peace. 
He was a firm friend of England, and did all in his 
power to cement the friendship between England and 
France. But he was opposed to an alliance of the 
French nation with Russia, because of the autocratic 
rule of the czar. His colonial policy' was exactly op¬ 
posed to the idea of imperial expansion that was sweep¬ 
ing all Europe. He could not see the sense of risk¬ 
ing millions of francs in remote expeditions when his 
own country needed schools and roads. 

After seventeen years of such activity in public 
affairs, he was compelled by his political opponents to 
retire. He was then an extremely active and alert man, 
a little over fifty years of age, with the same combina¬ 
tion of physical force and intellectual interests that he 
had shown as a boy. 

Turning from politics, he had now for the first 
time the opportunity to indulge his love of literature 
and of writing. In a short time he became France’s 


272 


BIOGRAPHY 



Copyright Underwood and Underwood 

Clemenceau 

greatest journalist, writing not only newspaper and 
magazine articles, but essays and a novel. 

But France still had need of him in public life. 
When he was sixty-five years old, he reentered parlia¬ 
ment as Minister of the Interior. Six months later 
he became prime minister. His head was now bald, 
his mustache gray, but from under the bushy, white 
eyebrows his eyes glowed with the fire and energy of 
youth. 





GEORGES CLEMENCEAU 


273 

He needed all the force that he could summon to 
meet the difficulties that surged upon him. A few 
days before he took office a terrible mining disaster 
had occurred. The mines had long been considered 
dangerous, but the mine owners, who were rich and 
high in political power, had refused to spend any of 
their tremendous profits on safeguarding the miners. 
Out of 1,800 miners who went down, 1,150 were stifled 
or burned to death. Upon Clemenceau fell the burden 
of handling the strikes and outbreaks that followed. 
He had troubles abroad as well as at home. Relations 
with Germany were strained over French possessions 
in Morocco. Clemenceau was increasingly worried by 
the threatening attitude of Germany, but his attempts 
to form an enduring alliance with England were 
bitterly opposed. 

After three years of strenuous activity, Clemenceau 
resigned the premiership, and from that time on until 
the outbreak of the World War preached, wrote, im¬ 
plored the French people to prepare, prepare, prepare! 
“ Germany,” he said, believes that the logical con¬ 
sequence of her victory is domination. We do not 
believe that the logical consequence of our defeat is 
vassalage.” 

Writing in his newspaper, UHomme Libre (The 
Free Man), he warned the people day after day of 
the approaching danger from Germany, and appealed 
to Frenchmen to drop all differences of opinion and 
unite to save France from calamity. 



EUROPE 

1914 

Scale of Miles 

100 200 300 400 

I I I I 




























*I>»do9®^ 

stersburg 


Zkinube 


BULGARIA 

Sofla j 


RHOD6S! 




GENEBAL DB/>FTING CO.IWC..N.Y 





























BIOGRAPHY 


276 

When, in 1914, Germany violated the neutrality of 
Belgium, Clemenceau relived in his memory the ter¬ 
rible scenes of the invasion of 1870. Devoted as he 
was to France, and especially to Paris, this new attack 
came as a great blow. 

During the early years of the war, Clemenceau jus-, 
tified the nickname given to him and became a veri¬ 
table “ Tiger.” Like that great animal, he crouched 
silently, watching the moves of the Germans. Then 
he began to stir a little, getting ready to pounce. The 
attack came in the form of fiery speeches in which he 
rained criticisms on the ministers of war for being so 
inactive. 

In 1917, when the military situation looked almost 
desperate, Clemenceau rfever lost hope. Everywhere 
was depression — an air of defeat—talk of compro¬ 
mise. Suddenly, as if by general consent, there came a 
call for Clemenceau. Here was a man who for years 
had warned of the German attack. Here was a man who 
was afraid of nobody. Here was a man whose pa¬ 
triotism was above question. And so it was that France 
turned to her Grand Old Man,” who at the age of 
seventy-six assumed the heavy burden of the premier¬ 
ship and the position of minister of war in one of the 
greatest crises of history. 

He proved a tower of strength. When people 
faltered, or questioned, or doubted, he stood immov¬ 
able. He breathed new life into the men who were 
fighting at the front, and into those who were work- 


GEORGES CLEMENCEAU 


277 

ing in the factories. He inspired others with his 
dogged determination to win. Always the dare-devil, 
Clemenceau went right into the front-line trenches. 
Once, on being reprimanded for being so reckless, he 
replied: “What does it matter? I am old enough to 
be killed.” 

The tide turned in July, 1918, and the French, 
English, and American troops won victory after vic¬ 
tory until the war was over. 

When Clemenceau entered the senate to hear the 
resolution of thanks passed by that body in recognition 
of his great services to his country, he received an al¬ 
most overpowering welcome. For the first time in his 
life the fighting Tiger broke down. Tears ran down 
his cheeks, and for some minutes he was unable to 
speak. He had saved the republic for which his father 
had worked and prayed and suffered. 


DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 
1863 - 

In a picturesque Welsh village between the moun¬ 
tains and the sea there grew up a curly-headed little 
boy, bright-eyed, attractive, courageous. His father, 
a school-teacher at Manchester, a man of keen mind, 
had died when David was a baby, leaving his young 
wife and their three children with no means of support. 
Here at Llanystumdy, in a little four-room cottage, 
David’s uncle, a master bootmaker and preacher, 
undertook to care for his sister’s family. 

Young David was a mischievous boy, full of energy 
and afraid of nothing. One old inhabitant of Llany¬ 
stumdy would say, whenever he found anything wrong 
about his place, “ That’s that David Lloyd George at 
it again.” 

But, in spite of his reputation for mischief, David 
was a great stickler for the truth. His early schooling 
was obtained at the National School provided by the 
established Church of England. David, brought up 
by his uncle to be a non-conformist, objected strongly 
to being forced to follow the religious teachings that 
were contrary to his beliefs. He organized a sort of 
strike once, because the school children were forced 
to say a creed-and-catechism in which they did not 
believe. He got together all the members of his class, 

278 


DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 


279 

and they agreed that the next time they were asked 
to say the creed-and-catechism they would refuse. On 
the day of the annual visit of the rector, the squire, 
and the gentry, the schoolmaster was doing his best 
to show oif the class. Unfortunately for him, he asked 
them to repeat the creed-and-catechism. Much to 
his surprise, no one stirred. Seconds passed like ages. 
Suddenly DavidY younger brother felt a pang of pity 
for the poor teacher and falteringly started to say the 
lines. The rest of the class still stood silent, infuriated 
at the desertion. In spite of the final surrender, the 
strike had its effect, and the school children were never 
forced to say the creed-and-catechism again. This was 
the forerunner of a long struggle, for the freedom of 
the Welsh people from the established Church of Eng¬ 
land, which Lloyd George was to wage in parliament. 

The Welsh village in which Lloyd George grew up 
was still feudal in many ways. The squire and rector 
had great power over the people who did not own their 
own land, but, like the Irish farmers, worked upon it 
for their rich landlords. These men laughed at the 
poor peasants who spoke the Welsh language and 
scoffed at them for their peculiar customs. This early 
aroused in Lloyd George a fierce desire to free his 
people from this oppression and scorn. He was to be 
later as ardent a defender of Wales as Gladstone had 
been, and was still, at this time, of Ireland. 

David, who was fond of debate, would engage in 
heated discussions with any one who would argue with 


28 o 


BIOGRAPHY 


him. In this way he acquired a great deal of knowl¬ 
edge, and was soon able to match his wits against most 
of the men of the village. In any argument he was 
clear-headed and quick, and had a way of flashing out 
at his opponents that left them gasping. In addition 
to these qualities, he had a gift for understanding the 
other person’s point of view and sympathizing with it, 
and this gave him a great power in persuading and 
bringing other people over to his side. 

Determined to be a lawyer, he went to the town of 
Criccieth to study law, his family going with him. 
All during the four years at school he worked as a 
clerk in a law office, wrote articles for newspapers, and 
debated in various societies. In these debates he gave 
expression to bold and courageous opinions. 

When he was twenty-one years old he passed his 
final examinations, put a brass plate on his front door, 
and began the practice of law in his back parlor. In 
a few years he had gained a wonderful reputation. 
People for hundreds of miles around came to him to 
help them out of their legal difficulties, and this cou¬ 
rageous and sympathetic young man, who understood 
so well the burdens of the farmer and the injustices 
he labored under, became known far and wide as the 
“ poor man’s lawyer.” 

Part of his success was the headlong way in which he 
went at his cases. He surprised his opponents into 
defeat. Once a case was brought to him in which the 
church officials of a certain place of worship had re- 


DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 281 

fused to allow a man to be buried beside his relatives 
because they wished to perform rites not used in that 
particular church. They offered instead a place in the 
potter’s field, where suicides and unknowns are buried. 
The heirs, enraged, sought Lloyd George to right the 
matter. He simply told them to prepare the funeral 
procession, and he would see that the cemetery was 
at their disposal. The church officials, defying him, 
promptly locked the gates. Lloyd George calmly 
proceeded to knock the fence down, and the funeral 
service was performed. 

When Lloyd George, in 1888, married Maggie 
Owens, a splendid girl of fine old Welsh family, the 
whole town, by this time devoted heart and soul to the 
young defender, turned out to celebrate the event, and 
enthusiastically set off fireworks on the night they 
left for their honeymoon in London. 

Four years later, when a Conservative member of 
parliament from his district died, Lloyd George, the 
young Radical lawyer, opposed an old Tory squire in 
the election of a new member. In his speeches he 
promised religious liberty, land reforms, and local self- 
government for Wales. He won his first seat in the 
English parliament by the narrow margin of eighteen 
votes. 

When he entered parliament as the Liberal member 
from Carnarvonshire he was the youngest man in the 
House. The first speech a new member of parliament 
makes before that critical body of men is always an 


282 


BIOGRAPHY 


ordeal. Lloyd George, a slender, well-dressed young 
man, in a frock coat and wearing side whiskers, came 
through his ordeal with flying colors. 

Encouraged by his success, he plunged into the real 
interest of his life — his determination to tell the 
comfortable and wealthy that they were living on the 
poor.” 

He began by urging Welsh freedom from the bur¬ 
dens of the State Church, and indicated that he would 
later work for Welsh home rule. The cabinet at this 
time was strongly opposed to home rule for Ireland, 
which Lloyd George, of course, was heartily support¬ 
ing. Once while arguing on that subject he raised 
roars of laughter from the House by his quick wit. 

“ Some day we must have home rule, not only for 
Ireland, but for Scotland as well and Wales,” he had 
been saying, when some one in the audience shouted. 

And home rule for Hell! ” 

That’s right,” answered Lloyd George. Every 
one stick up for his own country.” 

During these first years of parliamentary experience 
the Boer War in South Africa broke out. The ministry 
was in favor of fighting and suppressing the South 
African militants, but Lloyd George, always a believer 
in the rights of small countries to manage their own 
affairs, hurled speech after speech of criticism against 
the government for its conduct of the war against the 
Dutch republics. 

As Lloyd George rose higher in public esteem, his 


DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 


283 



Copyright Underwood and Underwood 
Lloyd George 


unusual ability was recognized by his appointment as 
member of the cabinet in the position of president of 
the Board of Trade. In this work he had an oppor¬ 
tunity to exert his power in behalf of the sailors on 
board British ships. He remedied many shocking 
abuses and passed laws protecting their rights and giv¬ 
ing them decent and comfortable working conditions. 




BIOGRAPHY 


284 

It was during this period, too, that his unusual skill 
in conciliating opposing sides was brought to bear on 
the settlement of great labor strikes. 

As chancellor of the exchequer in 1909 he won one 
of his most sensational victories, a stroke of state such 
as no one had dreamed of. Having made an extensive 
study of the way in which the Germans cared for their 
old people through national insurance, he returned 
to England to work for old-age pensions there. The 
opposition to his bill arose in connection with the 
necessity of raising the money to pay these pensions. 
True to his unchanging determination to fight poverty 
and wretchedness among the masses, he secured, against 
the bitterest opposition, a budget that levied taxes on 
the luxuries of the rich to pay for the old-age pensions 
for the poor. The passage of that famous bill is one 
of the landmarks in history. 

But it was as England’s strong war minister that the 
little Welshman ” was to do his greatest work. Dur¬ 
ing the first days of gathering war clouds Lloyd George 
was a man of peace. After the invasion of Belgium 
by the Germans, he did not hesitate for a minute to 
throw his influence on the side of war, and, the de¬ 
cision once made, he gave himself entirely to the cause. 

I can understand,” said he, “ a man opposing war, 
but I cannot understand his waging war with half a 
heart.” 

Lloyd George decided that, in order to win the war, 
the cabinet must have more power. This was opposed 


DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 


285 

by the prime minister, and he resigned his office. 
Nothing remained but for the king to send for Lloyd 
George, who took his place at the helm. 

From the beginning Lloyd George had feared a 
long war. When the French had checked the German 
advance and defeated them in the Battle of the Marne, 
September, 1914, and the English were saying that the 
war was over, Lloyd George was not so optimistic. 
He knew the strength of the Germans and, instead of 
indulging in any dreams of early victory, he went on 
preparing for a long, hard struggle. 

The retreating Germans entrenched themselves be¬ 
fore the French and English could drive them out of 
France, and for four years the deadly struggle for 
victory on the western front went on with little change 
in the line but with great sacrifice of life. 

When America entered the war in 1917, in protest 
against Germany’s renewed submarine warfare, the 
number of Germany’s enemies greatly increased. Ger¬ 
many, with her allies, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and 
Bulgaria, was at that time opposed by France, Great 
Britain (and her colonies of Canada, Australia, New 
Zealand, South Africa, East India), Russia, Italy, Bel¬ 
gium, Serbia, Japan, Montenegro, and San Marino, 
Portugal, and Roumania. After the entrance of the 
United States, Cuba, Panama, and Brazil, in South 
America, followed suit. Greece, Siam, Liberia, and 
China proclaimed war on Germany later. The war 
was waged both on land and sea. All colonial pos- 


286 BIOGRAPHY 

sessions were mobilized. It was, indeed, a World 
W ar. 

Never has the world known such ruthless warfare. 
Modern scientific inventions multiplied the kinds of 
death-dealing instruments. Machine guns, huge can¬ 
non, airplanes, poison gas, liquid fire, submarines — 
all these and more made this the greatest slaughter in 
history. 

By the first of July, 1918, about a million American 
troops were fighting with the Allies, and this number 
was increased to two million men before the war was 
over. Ludendorff, the German general, in comment¬ 
ing on the German defeat, says that its chief cause was 
the war spirit which had been aroused in England 
under the leadership of Lloyd George and in France 
under the inspiration of Clemenceau. Both of these 
dauntless leaders themselves do not hesitate to say that 
all their efforts would have been in vain had it not 
been for the timely arrival of American troops and 
supplies and the inspiring hope brought by the Amer¬ 
ican soldiers. 

On November ii, 1918, the armistice, dictated to 
the Germans by General Foch, commander-in-chief of 
the allied troops, was signed. That day the allied 
world went wild with joy. Bells rang. People pa¬ 
raded. Men shouted. Women wept with joy. In 
London, Paris, and New York there was a delirium of 
rej oicing. 

As a result of this great victory over the autocratic 


DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 



Copyright Underwood and Underwood 

Marshal Foch Urging that the Security of France be Pro¬ 
vided FOR IN THE Treaty 

armies of Prussia, the three most famous royal families 
of Europe fell — the Romanoffs in Russia, the Haps- 
burgs in Austria, the Hohenzollerns in Germany — 
and constitutional governments were established in 
their places. 

But those who had borne the terrific burden of the 
responsibility knew that the war was not entirely over 
as yet, and neither England nor France was willing to 
relieve its great leaders from the difficult task of the 
making of peace. Paris was chosen as the meeting 









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BIOGRAPHY 


290 

place for a conference. In the stately halls of Ver¬ 
sailles that had echoed to the tread of merry monarchs, 
fugitive royalty, and infuriated mobs, the first session 
of that memorable conference was held. Thirty-two 
nations were represented, and France’s Grand Old 
Man, Clemenceau, was chosen president. The real 
work of the conference soon narrowed down to the Big 
Four, Lloyd George, the radical Welshman, repre¬ 
senting England 3 Clemenceau, the fiery republican, 
standing for France; for America, its great war presi¬ 
dent, Woodrow Wilson; and for Italy, Orlando. 

Upon the first three fell the burden of the work 
and the final drawing of the treaty. They had before 
them all the problems to decide that had been growing 
in Europe ever since the time of Louis XIV. Amer¬ 
ica’s aim was largely an ideal one — that of world con¬ 
ciliation and permanent world peace. The French, who 
had suffered most from invasion, very naturally em¬ 
phasized a peace that would make them feel secure. 
England’s aims were somewhat between these two, 
combining the ideal and the practical. 

Lloyd George, with his genius for understanding 
people and bringing them together, was often the 
means of conciliating Wilson and Clemenceau. He 
wanted a stern peace, but a just one, and hoped to 
avoid the seeds of future wars in the terms of this 
treaty. He wanted to make a peaceful settlement with 
the new Russian soviet government. Just as Welling¬ 
ton had prevented Prussia from being cruel to the 


DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 


291 

French after Waterloo, so Lloyd George used his in¬ 
fluence to prevent the French from crushing the de¬ 
feated Germans. 

All during these trying days Lloyd George lived a 
simple and homely life in a modest flat in Paris. His 
naturally sociable disposition found much pleasure in 
the cafes and theaters there. He got his diversion 
from the perplexing problems of the day, watching his 
son and daughter, who were with him, dancing at the 
afternoon teas. 

Imperfect as all treaties are, it is yet true that this 
one was based upon the principle that military con¬ 
quest and glory are no longer to be tolerated in a civ¬ 
ilized world j and the map of Europe was remade, 
with an attempt, at least, to insure to all nations, large 
or small, the right of self-determination. 

So terrible had been this conflict that in the hearts 
of many, and especially in America’s President, there 
was the hope that this might be a war to end war. For 
this reason the formation of a League of Nations, that, 
through its representatives, would control the world 
in the interests of peace, was made a part of the treaty. 
He saw the League established, but his own country 
later divided on the question and ultimately remained 
outside. 

On May 6, 1919, the final draft of the treaty was 
completed. It was a gigantic task and its pages made 
a huge volume. After six weeks of communication 
with Germany, the German Assembly ratified the treaty 


292 BIOGRAPHY 

and the German envoys signed it at Versailles, 
June 29. 

When Lloyd George returned to England, he spoke 
in defense of the treaty and won a unanimous ratifica¬ 
tion of parliament on July the third. He had achieved 
peace for England, but he returned from the strain of 
the Peace Conference white and lined and looking 
ten years older. 

When Louis XIV threatened the kingdoms of Eu¬ 
rope with his wars of conquest, the treaty of Utrecht 
in 1713 brought peace by strengthening all the mon- 
archs of Europe against the aggressions of one. One 
hundred years later, when Napoleon’s threat of world 
domination was checked at Waterloo, the peace of 
Paris in 1815 was but another effort to make the world 
safe for kings. Another century later, at the close of 
the great World War in 1919, a new ideal entered into 
the peace of Versailles — that of making the world 
safe for democracy by bringing about a permanent 
peace. 

America entered the World War with no thought of 
personal gain. She has continued since the war to aid 
in the relief and reconstruction of the civilization of 
Europe almost wrecked by the war. Her hope now, as 
then, is for peace — “a real peace based on faith and 
confidence and good feeling.” 


INDEX 


Adams, John Quincy, 96 
Albany, 97 

Albert, Prince Consort, 194—198 
Alps, 113 

xAlsace-Lorraine, 186 
Andes, 164 
Argentina, 163 
Aristotle, 82 
Austerlitz, 115 
Australia, 70, 71 

Bacon, Roger, 82 
Balmoral, 243 
Bastile, 16, 40 

Beauharnais, Josephine, iio, 117 
“Benevolent Despot,” 32, 187 
Benjamin Franklin, 38 
Black Hole of Calcutta, 68 
Boers, 231 

Bonaparte, Joseph, 107, 117 
Burke, Edmund, 72, 73 

Cambridge University, 50 
Catherine II of Russia, 76, 80 
Charles X of France, 149 
Charles XII of Sweden, 60 
Clive, Robert, 65, 68, 69, 140 
Colbert, 6 
Constantinople, 60 
Cook, Captain James, 70 
Copernicus, 83 
Crimean War, 239 

Danton, 42 
Dauphin, 43 

293 


Davis, Jefferson, 206 
Diamond Jubilee, 200 
Disease Germ Theory, 252, 257 
Divine Right of Kings, 6 
Dual Monarchy, 159 
Dutch Republics, 236 

East India Companies, 65 
Egypt,' 112, 131 
Elba, 124 

Elizabeth, Queen of Belgium, 264 
Emperor William II, 188, 235 
Estates General, 39 
Eton College, 136, 137 

Ferdinand I of Austria, 155 
Francis Joseph, 156, 159 
Frederick William I, 22-24 
French and Indian War, 69 
French Revolution, 36—45, 104 
Friedland, 115 
Fulton, Robert, 92 

Galileo, 83 

George II of England, 25, 65, 129 
George III of England, 71, 85 
Gibraltar, 13 3 
Gladstone, 144 
Gravitation, Law of, 51 
Greene, Nathaniel, 77 

Hapsburgs, 145, 153, 157, 287 
Hargreaves, 84 

Hohenzollerns, 21, 22, 184, 287 
Holland, 7, 122, 140 



INDEX 


294 

Holy Roman Empire, 117 
Home Rule Bill, 208 
Huguenots, 9 
Hungary, 153, 160 

Imperialism, British, 218, 219 
Indiana, 99 
Indian Sanitary Commission, 244 
Industrial Revolution, 91, 143 
Inkerman, Battle of, 240 
Irish Disestablishment Law, 207 

Jackson’s Administration, 100 

Jacobins, 42 

Jamaica, 168 

James I of England, 6 

James II of England, 53 

Jameson Raid, 236 

Jena, 115 

“Jingo,” 218 

Junkers, 180 

Kay, 84 
Kentucky, 99 
Kimberley, 229 
Kossuth, 151 
Kruger, 236 

Lafayette Square, 74 
Louis XV, 35 
Louis XVI, 35-45, 130 
Louis XVIII, 124 
Louisiana, 114 
Louis Napoleon, 267 
Louis Philippe, 151, 155, 267 
Ludendorff, 286 

Marat, 42 

Maria Theresa of Austria, 28, 29 
Maria Theresa of Spain, 4 
Marne, Battle of, 285 


Mazarin, Cardiual, i 
Mazzini, 150, 175 
Melbourne, Lord, 193 
Mexico, 269 
Mirabeau, 39 
Miranda, 162 

Monroe Doctrine, 148, 170 
More, Sir Thomas, 104 
Moscow, 61, 122 

Naples, 117 
Napoleonic Code, 114 
Napoleon III, 268, 269 
Nelson, 112, 144 
Newcastle, 93, 94 
New England, 122 
New York, 97, 176 
Nile, 126, 131 

O’Higgins, 164 
Ohio, 99 

Orange Free State, 232 
Orlando, 290 
Orleans, Duke of, 15 
Owen, Robert, 104, 105 
Oxford, 63 

Paris, 120 

Paul I of Russia, 80, 81 
Peninsular War, 142 
Pitt the Younger, 129 
Plassey, 68 
Poland, 31, 122 
“ Puffing Billy,” 95 

Reform Bill of 1832, 143 

Reform Bill of 1867, 207 

Reform Bill of 1884, 208 

Reign of Terror, 42 
Rheims Cathedral, 2 
Rhodesia, 233, 235 


, 270 



INDEX 


295 


Robespierre, 42 
Romanoffs, 287 
Rome, 174 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 230 

Sardinia, 176 
Schleswig-Holstein, 185 
Sedan, 270 
Silesia, 28—30 
Socialism, 104 
Sophia of Russia, 56, 57 
Stamp Act, 71, 72 
Stanley, Henry M., 228 
St. Helena, 125 
St. Petersburg, 61, 80 
Stratford, 62 

“Thousand Red Shirts,” 178 
Trafalgar, 126, 135 
Transvaal, 231 
Trianon, 39 
Triple Alliance, 188 
Tuileries, 40, 42 

Union and Central Pacific, loi 
Uruguay, 161 
Utica, 97 


“ Utopia,” 104 

Utrecht, Treaty of, 12, 292 

Valley Forge, 161 
Varennes, 41 
Venezuela, 167 
Versailles, 9, 35 > 38 
Versailles, Peace of, 292 
Victor Emmanuel, 176, 178 
Victoria Falls, 226 
Vienna, iii, 155 
Voltaire, 27, 28, 54, 102 

Walpole, Sir Robert, 63 
War of 1812, 120 
Washington, George, 161 
Waterloo, 124, 142, 146 
Wellington, 124, 151 
Westminster Abbey, 54, 135 
West Point, 76 
Whitney, Eli, 86 
William of Orange, 7 
Wilson, Woodrow, 290 
Wolfe, 69 
World War, 286 

Zichy, Melanie, 150 
Zambezi River, 225 



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